"I know who is coming," said Seraphita in a sleepy voice. "Wilfrid may come in."

On hearing these words, a man at once appeared, and came to sit down by her.

"My dear Seraphita, are you ill? You look paler than usual."

She turned languidly towards him, after tossing back her hair like a pretty woman overpowered by sick headache and too feeble to complain.

"I was foolish enough," said she, "to cross the fiord with Minna; we have been up the Falberg."

"Did you want to kill yourself?" cried he, with a lover's alarm.

"Do not be uneasy, my good Wilfrid, I took great care of your Minna."

Wilfrid struck the table violently with his hand, took a few steps towards the door with an exclamation of pain; then he came back and began to reproach her.

"Why so much noise if you suppose me to be suffering?" said Seraphita.

"I beg your pardon, forgive me," said he, kneeling down. "Speak harshly to me, require anything of me that your cruel woman's caprice may suggest to you as hardest to be endured, but, my beloved, do not doubt my love! You use Minna like a hatchet to hit me with again and again. Have some mercy!"

"Why speak thus, my friend, when you know that such words are useless?" she replied, looking at him with a gaze that became at last so soft that what Wilfrid saw was not Seraphita's eyes, but a fluid light shimmering like the last vibrations of a song full of Italian languor.

"Ah! anguish cannot kill!" cried he.

"Are you in pain?" said she, in a voice which produced on him the same effect as her look. "What can I do for you?"

"Love me, as I love you!"

"Poor Minna!" said she.

"I never bring any weapons!" cried Wilfrid.

"You are in a detestable temper," said Seraphita, smiling. "Have I not spoken nicely, like the Parisian ladies of whom you tell me love stories?"

Wilfrid sat down, folded his arms, and looked gloomily at Seraphita.

"I forgive you," said he, "for you know not what you do."

"Oh!" retorted she, "every woman from Eve downwards knows when she is doing good or evil."

"I believe it," said he.

"I am sure of it, Wilfrid. Our intuition is just what makes us so perfect.

What you men have to learn, we feel."

"Why, then, do you not feel how much I love you?"

"Because you do not love me."

"Great G.o.d!"

"Why then do you complain of anguish?"

"You are terrible this evening, Seraphita. You are a perfect demon!"

"No; but I have the gift of understanding, and that is terrifying.

Suffering, Wilfrid, is a light thrown on life."

"Why did you go up the Falberg?"

"Minna will tell you; I am too tired to speak. You must talk, you who know everything, who have learned everything and forgotten nothing, and have gone through so many social experiences. Amuse me; I am listening."

"What can I tell you that you do not know! Indeed, your request is a mockery. You recognize nothing that is worldly, you a.n.a.lyze its terminology, you demolish its laws, its manners, feelings, sciences, by reducing them to the proportions they a.s.sume when we take our stand outside the globe."

"You see, my friend, I am not a woman. You are wrong to love me. What! I quit the ethereal regions of strength you attribute to me; I make myself humble and insignificant to stoop after the manner of the poor female of every species--and you at once uplift me! Then, when I am crushed and broken, I crave your help; I want your arm, and you repulse me! We do not understand each other."

"You are more malignant this evening than I have ever known you."

"Malignant?" said she, with a flashing look that melted every sentiment into one heavenly emotion. "No; I am weary, that is all. Then, leave me, my friend. Will not that be a due exercise of your rights as a man? We are always to charm you, to recreate you, always to be cheerful, and have no whims but those that amuse you.--What shall I do, my friend? Shall I sing, or dance, when fatigue has deprived me of voice and of the use of my legs?

Yes, gentlemen, at our last gasp we still must smile on you! That, I believe, you call your sovereignty!--Poor women! I pity them. You abandon them when they are old; tell me, have they then no longer heart or soul?

Well, and I am more than a hundred, Wilfrid. Go--go to kneel at Minna's feet."

"Oh, my one, eternal love!"

"Do you know what eternity is? Be silent, Wilfrid.--You desire me, but you do not love me.--Tell me, now, do not I remind you of some coquette you have met?"

"I certainly do not see you now as the pure and heavenly maiden I saw for the first time in the church at Jarvis."

As he spoke Seraphita pa.s.sed her hands over her brow, and when she uncovered her face Wilfrid was astonished at the religious and saintly expression it wore.

"You are right, my friend. I am always wrong to set foot on your earth."

"Yes, beloved Seraphita, be my star.--Never descend from the place whence you shed such glorious light on me."

He put out his hand to take the girl's, but she withdrew it, though without disdain or anger. Wilfrid hastily rose and went to stand by the window, turning towards it so that Seraphita should not see a few tears that filled his eyes.

"Why these tears?" she asked. "You are no longer a boy, Wilfrid. Come back to me, I insist.--You are vexed with me, when it is I who should be angry.

You see I am not well, and you compel me by some foolish doubts to think and speak, or partic.i.p.ate in whims and ideas that fatigue me. If you at all understood my nature, you would have given me some music; you would have soothed my weariness; but you love me for your own sake, not for myself."

The storm which raged in Wilfrid's soul was stilled by these words; he came back slowly to contemplate the bewitching creature who reclined under his eyes, softly pillowed, her head resting on her hand, and her elbow in an insinuating att.i.tude.

"You fancy I do not like you," she went on. "You are mistaken. Listen, Wilfrid. You are beginning to know a great deal, and you have suffered much. Allow me to explain your thoughts. You wanted to take my hand."

She sat up, and her graceful movement seemed to shed gleams of light.

"Does not a girl who allows a man to take her hand make a promise, and ought she not to keep it? You know full well that I can never be yours. Two feelings rule the love that attracts the women of this earth: either they devote themselves to suffering creatures, degraded and guilty, whom they desire to comfort, to raise, to redeem; or they give themselves wholly to superior beings, sublime and strong, whom they are fain to worship and understand--by whom they are too often crushed. You have been degraded, but you have purified yourself in the fires of repentance, and you now are great; I feel myself too small to be your equal, and I am too religious to humble myself to any power but that of the Most High. Your life, my friend, may thus be stated; we are in the North, among the clouds, where abstractions are familiar to our minds."

"Seraphita, you kill me when you talk so," he replied. "It is always torture to me to see you thus apply the monstrous science which strips all human things of the properties they derive from time, s.p.a.ce, form, when you regard them mathematically under some ultimate simplest expression, as geometry does with bodies, abstracting dimensions from substance."

"Well, Wilfrid, I submit.--Look at this bearskin rug which my poor David has spread. What do you think of it?"