1
"So you are going on a long journey?" she asked.
He sat facing her, motionless, with anguish on his face. Outwardly
she was very calm, only there was a sadness in her look and in her
voice. In her white dress, with the girdle falling before her feet,
she lay back among the three pillows of the rose-moire sofa; the tips
of her little slippers were buried in the white sheepskin rug. On the
table before her lay a great bouquet of loose roses, pink, white and
yellow, bound together with a broad riband. He had brought them for
her and she had not yet placed them. There was a great calm about her;
the exquisite atmosphere of the boudoir seemed unchanged.
"Tell me, am I not paining you severely?" he asked, with the anguish
in his eyes, the eyes which she now knew so well.
She smiled:
"No," she said. "I will be honest with you. I have suffered, but I
suffer no longer. I have struggled with myself for the second time
and I have conquered myself. Will you believe me?"
"If you knew the remorse that I feel...."
She rose and went to him:
"What for?" she asked, in a clear voice. "Because you read me and
gave me happiness?"
"Did I?"
"Have you forgotten?"
"No," he said, "but I thought...."
"What?"
"I don't know; I thought that you would ... would suffer so ... and
I ... I cursed myself!..."
She shook her head gently, with smiling disapproval:
"For shame!" she said. "Do not blaspheme!..."
"Can you forgive me?"
"I have nothing to forgive. Listen to me. Swear to me that you believe
me, that you believe that you have given me happiness and that I am
not suffering."
"I ... I swear."
"I trust that you are not swearing this merely to satisfy my wish."
"You have been the highest thing in my life," he said, gently.
A rapture shot through her soul.
"Tell me only...." she began.
"What?"
"Tell me if you believe that I, I, I ... shall always remain the
highest thing in your life."
She stood before him, tall, in her clinging white. She seemed to shed
radiance; never had he seen her so beautiful.
"I am certain of that," he said. "Certain, oh, certain!... My God,
how can I convey the certainty of it to you?"
"But I believe you, I believe you!" she exclaimed.
She laughed a laugh of rapture. In her soul a sun seemed to be shooting
forth rays on every side. She placed her arm tenderly about his neck
and kissed his forehead with a chaste caress.
For one moment he seemed to forget everything. He too rose, took her
in his arms, almost savagely, and clasped her suddenly to him, as if
he were about to crush her against his breast. She just caught sight
of his sad eyes; then she saw nothing more, blinded by the kisses
of his mouth, which scorched her whole face as though with sparks of
fire. With the sun-rapture of her soul was mingled a bliss of earth,
a yielding to the violence of his embrace. But the thought flashed
across her of what she would lose if she yielded. She released herself,
put him away and said:
"And now ... go."
He felt stunned; he understood that he had no choice:
"Yes, yes, I am going," he said. "I may write to you, may I not?"
She nodded yes, with her smile:
"Write to me, I shall write to you too," she said. "Let me always
hear from you...."
"Then these are not to be the last words between us? This ... this
... is not the end?"
"No."
"Thank you. Good-bye, mevrouw, good-bye ... Cecile. Ah, if you knew
what this moment costs me!"
"It must be. It cannot be otherwise. Go, go. You must go. Do go...."
She gave him her hand again, for the last time. A moment later he
was gone.
2
She looked about her strangely, with bewildered eyes, with hands
locked together:
"Go, go...." she repeated, like one raving.
Then she noticed the roses. With something like a faint scream she
sank down before the little table and buried her face in his gift,
until the thorns wounded her face. The pain--two drops of blood which
fell from her forehead--brought her back to her senses. Standing
before the Venetian mirror hanging over her writing-table, she wiped
away the red spots with her handkerchief.
"Happiness!" she stammered to herself. "His happiness! The highest
thing in his life! So he knew happiness, though short it was. But now
... now he suffers, now he will suffer again, as he did before. The
remembrance of happiness cannot do everything. Ah, if it could only
do that, then everything would be well, everything!... I wish for
nothing more, I have had my life, my own life, my own happiness; I
now have my children; I now belong to them. To him I must no longer
be anything...."
She turned away from the mirror and sat down on the settee, as though
tired with a great space traversed, and she closed her eyes, as though
blinded with too great a light. She folded her hands together, like
one in prayer; her face beamed in its fatigue, from smile to smile.
"Happiness!" she repeated, faltering between her smiles. "The highest
thing in his life! O my God, happiness! I thank Thee, O God, I thank
Thee!..."
THE END
NOTES
[1] Two military staff-colleges in Holland and Java respectively.
[2] The leading club at The Hague.
End of Project Gutenberg's Ecstasy: A Study of Happiness, by Louis Couperus