Sylva

“I’m thinking of Shaw’s. What you are going to do goes even beyond Professor Higgins’s exploit. He merely transformed a flower girl into a lady. You’re going to transform a beast into a woman. You’ll love her. You already do.”

“I? But you’re raving mad! Besides, I’ll have you know that if there’s someone I love-”

“Shut up!” she shouted.

I can’t bear to be silenced. And yet I ought to have welcomed her violence. What a moment for making a declaration of love, when I was steeped in the most extreme sentimental confusion! But this “Shut up!” instead of curbing my rashness, made me lose my temper.

“Why should I shut up? I have kept my mouth shut for ten years! I let you slip once already, I’m not going to start again!”

I saw her turn pale. She lifted a warning hand to silence me. Her lips quivered but no word came. I seized her hand in both of mine.

“I am in danger, am I?” I cried. “Well, help me out of it! Provided, that is, that you love me,” I added, lifting her hand to my face.

But she tore it away and got up. She began to walk up and down, bending and unbending the fingers of her clasped hands.

“That’s what I should have cried to you ten years ago,” she said tonelessly. She gave a stricken sigh. “I’m too much of a wreck,” she murmured. “I can’t save anybody any more.”

“Look here, Dorothy…”

“No!” she cried, then added more softly, musingly: “If I love you? Can I still love? Shall I ever be able to again?” She bent and unbent her fingers. “I thought I loved that man,” she said in a very low, rather husky voice. “I would have given my life for him. In a way I have given it: he horrified me and yet I’d have stood up to the whole earth. His death came as a relief. It also made me desperate, it left me just like one of those jellyfish that one finds motionless on the beach: limp and without feeling. Just anybody can pick up a jellyfish-and for ten years I let myself be picked up by just anybody. I hardly even remember it.”

My heart had turned to ice while I listened to this sudden confession, but I could think of nothing to say. She looked at me thoughtfully.

“Whatever happens, whatever you may do, I want you to know that you’ll be forgiven,” she said strangely.

I got up, walked over to her, grasped her beautiful shoulders and forced her to turn toward me.

“Dorothy,” I said to her calmly, “suppose Sylva could hear us now, do you think she would understand a single word of what we are saying?”

Was it the beginning of a smile or only color returning to her cheeks? She repeated like an echo:

“No, she would not understand a single word.”

“Can you seriously imagine that I could think of marrying so rudimentary a being, even on some very distant day, when you are about, right here, close to me? Doesn’t it strike you as completely absurd?”

She shook her head. This time she was really smiling. But joylessly.

“I’m not a woman one marries, either,” she murmured, and hung her head. “I have nothing to offer. I’m a dried-out crab: a carapace with nothing inside.” She raised her head. “Life doesn’t return to an empty shell. Sylva too is empty-for the time being. But in her something some day may come to life. That’s just what makes me afraid for you.”

She must have seen from my blank look that I did not understand. She took my hands, removed them from her shoulders.

“What she’ll have in her brain cells will have been put there by you. What the Pygmalions of this world love is precisely their own likeness. How can they resist it? And on that day there’ll be nothing I can put in the balance. My presence would soon weigh on you like a cumbersome piece of furniture. But if you marry that creature it’ll be the end of you, Albert. I’m not jealous-nor prudish, I repeat. I’ve less right than anyone, alas, to sermonize you! But I’m afraid that once she has a mind, a physical affaire won’t be enough for you.”

“Well then, marry me,” I said gently.

But she shook her head obstinately.

“I’d be your mistress if you like,” she said, very simply. “It would be more honest but I’m afraid that it wouldn’t make any difference when the day comes-it would merely make me a little more miserable.”

“Let’s try anyhow,” I said just as simply; but I was deeply moved.

She took my head between her hands and kissed me lightly on the lips.

“Not now,” she breathed. “When you really want me.”

Chapter 19