He made no reply.
“Why do you not speak?” she urged impatiently.
“You have long been keeping silence,” he replied, “although always you have known how solicitous I am on your account. Permit me, therefore, to keep silence and reflect.”
“Yet, if you do that, I shall feel uneasy. Never ought I to have spoken out. Pray say something.”
“What am I to say?” he asked meditatively. “It may be that a nervous break down is hanging over you. Should that be so, the doctor, not I, will have to decide how best you can be treated. I will send for him to-morrow. In any case, if the mischief is not that, then——”
“Then what?” she queried, shaking his arm.
“It is over-imagination on your part. You are too full of life and hitherto been maturing.” He was speaking rather to himself than to her.
“Pray utter your thoughts aloud, Andrei,”
“It is over—I am still maturing,” she said beseechingly. “I cannot bear it when you go muttering to yourself like that. I have told you of my follies, and you merely bow your head and mumble something into your beard. In this dark spot such conduct makes me feel uncomfortable.”
“I am at a loss what to say. You tell me, ‘Depression comes over me,’ and ‘I find myself troubled with disturbing questions.’ What am I to make of that? Let us speak on the subject again later, and in the meanwhile consider matters. Possibly you require a course of sea-bathing, or something of the kind.”
“But you said to yourself: ‘Hitherto you have been maturing.’ What did you mean by that?”
“I was thinking that, that——” He spoke slowly and hesitatingly, as though he were distrustful of his own thoughts and ashamed of his own words. “You see, there are moments when symptoms of this kind betoken that, if a woman has nothing radically wrong with her health, she has reached maturity—has arrived at the stage when life’s growth becomes arrested, and there remains for her no further problem to solve.”
“Then you mean that I am growing old?” she interrupted sharply. “How can you say that? I am still young and strong.” And she drew herself up as she spoke.
He smiled.
“Do not fear,” he said. “You are not of the kind that will ever grow old. True, in old age one’s energies fail, and one ceases to battle with life; but that is a very different thing. Provided it be what I take it to be, your sense of depression and weariness is a sign of vigour. Frequently the growings of a vivid, excitable intellect transcend the limits of everyday existence, and, finding no answer to what that intellect demands of life, become converted into despondency and a temporary dissatisfaction with life. The meaning of it is that the soul is sorrowful at having to ask life its secret. Perhaps such is the case with you. If so, you need not term it folly.”
She sighed, but, apparently, with relief at the thought that the danger was over, and that she had not fallen in her husband’s estimation.
“I am quite happy,” she repeated, “nor do I spend my time in dreaming, nor is my life monotonous. What more, then, is there for me to have? What do these questionings portend? They harass me like a sickness.”
“They are a spur to encourage a weak, groping intellect which has lacked full preparation. True, such depression and selfquestionings have caused many to lose their senses; but to others they seem mere formless visions, a mere fever of the brain.”
“To think that just when one’s happiness is full to overflowing, and one is thoroughly in love with life, there should come upon one a taint of sorrow!” she murmured.
“Yes; such is the payment exacted for the Promethean fire. You must not only endure, you must even love and respect, the sorrow and the doubts and the self-questionings of which you have spoken: for they constitute the excess, the luxury, of life, and show themselves most when happiness is at its zenith, and has alloyed with it no gross desires. Such troubles are powerless to spring to birth amid life which is ordinary and everyday; they cannot touch the individual who is forced to endure hardship and want. That is why the bulk of the crowd goes on its way without ever experiencing the cloud of doubt, the pain of self-questioning. To him or to her, however, who voluntarily goes to meet those difficulties they become welcome guests, not a scourge.”
“But one can never get even with them. To almost every one they bring sorrow and indifference.”
“Yes; but that does not last. Later they serve to shed light upon life, for they lead one to the edge of the abyss whence there is no return—then gently force one to turn once more and look upon life. Thus they seem to challenge one’s tried faculties in order that the latter may be prevented from sinking wholly into inertia.”
“And to think, also, that one should be disturbed by phantoms at all!” she lamented. “When all is bright, one’s life suddenly becomes overshadowed with some sinister influence. Is there no resource against it?”
“Yes, there is one. That resource lies in life itself. Without such phantoms and such questionings life would soon become a wearisome business.”
“Then what ought I to do? To submit to them, and to wear out my heart?”
“No,” he replied. “Rather, arm yourself with resolution, and patiently, but firmly, pursue your way.” With that he embraced her tenderly. “You and I are not Titans; it is not for us to join the Manfreds and the Fausts of this world in going out to do battle with rebellious problems. Rather, let us decline the challenge of such difficulties, bow our heads, and quietly live through the juncture until such time as life shall have come to smile again, and happiness be once more ours.”
“But suppose they decline to pass us by? Will not our doubts and fears continue to increase?”
“No; for we shall accept them as a new verse in life’s poem. In this case, however, there is no fear of that. Your trouble is not peculiar to you alone; it is an infectious malady common to all humanity, of which a touch has visited you with the rest. Invariably does a human being feel lost when he or she first breaks away from life and finds no support in place of it. May God send that in the present instance this mood of yours be what I believe it to be, and not a forerunner of some bodily illness. That would be worse, for it would be the one thing before which I should be nerveless and destitute of weapons. Surely that cloud, that depression, those doubts, those self-questionings of yours, are not going to deprive us of our happiness, of our———?” before he could do so, she had flung herself upon him in a frantic embrace.
“Nothing shall ever do that!” she murmured in an access of renewed joy and confidence. “No, neither doubts nor sorrow nor sickness! No, nor yet—nor yet death itself!” Never had she seemed to love him as she did at that moment.
“Take care that Fate does not overhear what you have whispered,” he interposed with a superstitious caution born of tender forethought for her. “Yes, take care that it does not rate you ungrateful, for it likes to have its gifts appreciated at their true worth. Hitherto you have been learning only about life: now you are going also to experience it. Soon, as life pursues its course, there will come to you fresh sorrows and travail; and, together, they will force you to look beyond the questions of which you have spoken, and therefore you must husband your strength.”
Schtoitz uttered these words softly, and almost as though he were speaking to himself. And in the words was a note of despondency which seemed to say that already he could see approaching her “sorrows” and “travail.”
She said nothing—she was too deeply struck with the mournful foreboding in his tone. Yet she trusted him implicitly—his voice alone inspired in her belief; and for that very reason his gravity affected her deeply, and concentrated her thoughts upon herself. Leaning upon him, she paced the avenue slowly and mechanically, with her soul awed to