Chapter 4

Eleanore was to sleep with Marian and Eva; Daniel was to have his old room. He showed it to Eleanore; they stepped to the window and looked out. They saw Eva down in the yard dancing back and forth barefooted on a wooden balustrade. She kept her equilibrium by holding out her arms. The grace of her movements was so fairy-like that Daniel and Eleanore smiled at each other in astonishment.

After dinner Daniel went out in front of the house; Marian and Eleanore sat for a while at the window; the light of the lamp shone behind them. Later they came out into the street and joined Daniel. Marian, however, was uneasy on account of the child. She said that Eva had been restless all day and might cry for her. “Stay out just as long as you like; I will leave the door open,” she said, and went back.

Daniel and Eleanore returned to the fair. It was still early in the evening, but the crowd had disappeared. They sauntered around among the booths, and stopped to listen to the harangue of a mountebank or to watch peasant boys shooting at figures of various kinds and a glass ball that danced on a jet of water. There was a sea of red and green lanterns; sky-rockets were hissing into the air from the rampart; musicians were playing in the cafés, while hilarious tipplers sang or hooted as the spirit moved them.

They came to a grass plot, the sole illumination of which was the light from a circus wagon. On the steps of the wagon sat a man in tricot holding the head of a black poodle between his knees.

“Those were the last inhabitants of the earth,” said Daniel, after they had crossed the square. The noise died away, the gaudy lights disappeared.

“How far are you going?” asked Eleanore, without the remotest trace of fear in her voice.

“I am going on until I am with you,” was the quick reply.

The indistinct outline of a bridge became visible; under it the water flowed noiselessly. The path had a yellowish shimmer; there were no stars in the heavens. Suddenly the path seemed to come to an end; at the end of it were trees there that seemed to be moving closer and closer together; it became darker and darker; they stopped.

“We have told each other our whole story,” said Daniel. “In the way of words we owe each other nothing. We have had enough of talk; there has been no lack of sorrow and enough of error. We can no longer act differently, and therefore we dare not act differently any longer.”

“Be still,” whispered Eleanore, “I don’t like your wrangling; what you say is so unpeaceful and fiendish. Yesterday I dreamed that you were lying on your knees and had your folded hands uplifted. Then I loved you—very much.”

“Do you need dreams in order to love me, girl? I don’t; I need you just as you are. I will soon be thirty years old, Eleanore. A man never really wakes up until he is thirty; it is then that he conquers the world. You know what rests within me; you suspect it. You know too how I need you; you feel it. You are my soul; you are created out of my music; without you I am an empty hull, a patchwork, a violin without strings.”

“Oh, Daniel, I believe you, and yet it is not all true,” replied Eleanore. He thought he could see in the darkness her mockingly ironical smile: “Somewhere, I am almost tempted to say in God, it is not true. If we were better, if we were beings in the image of God and acting in God’s ways, we would have to desist from our own ways. Then it would be wonderful to live: it would be like living above the clouds, happy, at peace, pure.”

“Does that come from your heart, Eleanore?”

“My dear, dear man! My heart, like yours, has been beclouded and bewitched. I cannot give you up. I have settled my accounts. In my soul I am entirely conscious of my guilt. I know what I am doing and assume full responsibility for my action. There is no use to struggle any longer; the water is already swirling over our heads. I simply want to say that you should not delude yourself into believing that we have risen up above other people by what we have done, that we have deserved the gratitude of fate. No, Daniel, what we are doing is precisely what all those do who fall. Let me stay with you, dearest; kiss me, kiss me to death.”