The Inevitable. Louis Couperus

the future. The lines of the women ... but had not every woman a line of her own? Only, how few of them knew it: their direction, their path, their line of life, their wavering course in the twilight of the future. And perhaps, because they did not know it for themselves, they were now all seeking together a broad path, a main road, along which they would march in troops, in a threatening multitude of women, in regiments of women, with banners and mottoes and war-cries, a broad path, parallel with the movement of the men, until the two paths would melt into one, until the troops of women would mingle with the troops of men, with equal rights and equal fullness of life....

      He said nothing to her. She noticed his silence and did not see how much was going on within him, how earnestly he was thinking of her, how profoundly he pitied her. She thought that she had bored him. And suddenly, around her, she saw the dim, barren room, saw that the fire was out; and her zeal subsided, her fever cooled and she thought her pamphlet bad, lacking strength and conviction. What would she not have given for a word from him! But he sat silent, seemed to take no interest, probably did not admire her style of writing. And she felt sad, deserted, lonely, estranged from him and bitter because of the estrangement; she felt ready to weep, to sob; and, strange to say, in her bitterness she thought of him, of her husband, with his handsome face. She could not restrain herself, she wept. Duco came up to her, put his hand on her shoulder. Then she felt something of what was going on within him and that his silence was not due to coldness. She told him that she could not remain alone that evening: she was too wretched, too wretched. He comforted her, said that there was much that was good, much that was true in her pamphlet; that he was not a good judge of these modern questions; that he was never clever except when he talked about Italy; that he felt so little for people and so much for statues, so little for what was newly building for a coming century and so much for what lay in ruins and remained over from earlier centuries. He said it as though apologizing. She smiled through her tears but repeated that she could not stay alone that evening and that she was coming with him to Belloni’s, to his mother and sisters. And they went together, they walked round together; and, to divert her mind, he spoke to her of his own thoughts, told her anecdotes of the Renascence masters. She did not hear what he said, but his voice was sweet to her ears. There was something so gentle about his indifference to the modern things that interested her, he had so much calmness, healing as balsam, in the restfulness of his soul, which allowed itself to move along the golden thread of his dreams, as though that thread was the line of his life, so much calmness and gentleness that she too grew calmer and gentler and looked up to him with a smile.

      And, however far removed they might be from each other—he going along a dreamy path, she lost in an obscure maze—they nevertheless felt each other approaching, felt their souls drawing nearer to each other, while their bodies moved beside each other in the actual street, through Rome, in the evening. He put his arm through hers to guide her steps.

      And, when they came in sight of Belloni’s, she thanked him, she did not know exactly for what: for the look in his eyes, for his voice, for the walk, for the consolation which she felt inexplicably yet clearly radiating from him; and she was glad to have come with him this evening and to feel the distraction of the Belloni table-d’hôte around her.

      But at night, alone, alone in her bare rooms, she was overcome by her wretchedness as by a sea of blackness; and, looking out at the Colosseum, which showed faintly as a black arc in the black night, she sobbed until she felt herself sinking to the point of death, derelict, lonely and forlorn, high up above Rome, above the roofs, above the pale lights of Rome by night, under the clouds of the black night, sinking and derelict, as though she were drifting, a shipwrecked waif on an ocean which drowned the world and roared its plaints to the inexorable heavens.