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rHE RANDOM SERIES

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Ex Ubris C. K. OGDEN

Ecstasy

tA Study of Happiness

"By

Louis Qouperus

Translated by ^A. Teixeira de OAattos l^ John Qray

A New ^^X. Edition

London H. Henry & Co. Ltd. 93 Saint Martin's Lane W.C.

MDCCCXCVII

-p^

LIBRARY PT UNIVEKSTTY OF CALIFORNIA

C-Op c-- SANTA BARBARA

I 89V

TRANSLATORS' NOTE.

How strangely conscious we are these few years over our translations ! And for no special reason as far as one can see ; unless it be that the work of tricking out in English the mass of foreign literature which has lately come to us has fallen mostly into the hands of young people : people literally too young to remember the days before the hateful period when translation was looked upon as hack-work for governesses ; people essen- tially too young to care.

Blatant evidence of this consciousness is found in the " introduction," without which it is sup- posed, seemingly, that no foreign novel or drama

TRAFSLATORS' NOTE.

can make a perfect bow from an English railway bookstall ; less too in the fact of such introduc- tions than in their peculiar tone ; an unasked apology which begins by saying that no apology is needed, and concludes with the comfortable assurance that writer and reader are both ex- ceedingly intelligent persons.

It is perfectly right and good that the trans- lator of French and Dutch and Norwegian work should take up his task as a task of high literature. Eegard to a tithe of the pious maxims which have been uttered on this subject spreads an ample field for more conscientious- ness than is ordinarily found in a translator. But let not the flattering sense of a worthy and perhaps self-sacrificing aim encourage in any the notion that such a view of such work dates only from the day when the ages decreed that so exotic a writer as Mr. Ibsen should be given to

TRANSLATORS' NOTE.

the English working classes in a paper wrapi)er. In all living literatures translations stand on the shelf of honour : Gerard de Nerval translated Heine ; of Luther's bible the astounding assertion has been made that it is greater even than King James' ; in English letters, add to this latter only our Chapman's Homer, Urquhart's Rabelais, Thornley's Daphnis and Chloe, Eossetti's Italian Poets, Burton's Arabian Nights, and my point is not far from gained.

Or perhaps the true explanation of the renais- sance of right feeling about translation is that editors and publishers nowaday caress themselves that it is the Qiovel they are recognising as an important form of artistic expression, to be given the importance and deference which would be due to a work of physical science.

From the point of view of those who seek subtle and gracious expression, or observation

TRANSLATORS' NOTE.

even approaching relevancy, the pulpit has ceased to exist. The wordy, stumping opposition, the stage, is but little better off. It might well forego its naive condescensions towards its elder. Some say. it is only sleeping ; and point trium- phantly to an occasional spasm.

Even the gentle lady Poetry is not seldom seen soiling her white hands and straining her tender muscles, dragging logs to make kennels for unheard-of monsters.

So now, and for a long time to come, it would seem, the novel is the preferred form of artistic utterance. In the novel this century has found that for which it passionately yearned. Among modes of art it is by far the most mobile and variable. The fewness of its restrictions places it with the greatest. It is alike capable of intense complexity and as great simplicity. Here it is wide-armed, embracing a world of

TRANSLATORS' NOTE.

men, in all their relations with one another, and all worldly things. There it is preoccupied, glass in hand, with one tiny aspect of one tiny soul. Thought and fancy, intellect and sense, are blended in almost any })roportions, to an infinite variety of results.

France with her great ones : Balzac, Flaubert, GrONCOURT, MAUPASSANT. Russia has set up a monument against which many a quibble has dashed itself and been broken to pieces. Where in the world is a work so noble, so simple, so austere, as Dostoiewski's Grime and Punish- ment ?

Holland, with her great vitality, has sprung tardily into activity with a great company of novel writers. These, for the major part, are some- what restricted in their scope ; and for this reason cannot fairly be compared with the masters of their art. They have very properly turned

TRANSLATORS' NOTE.

their attention to a field scarcely broken. On that they are working patiently, persistently, and it is against probability that they will not find some of the precious metal. The circle of intellect in Holland is geographically small ; and, though dissensions are not wanting either in number or violence, there is a fairly well-defined " school." A " school " in almost all" the ideas the word conveys. With the strong impulses of their age, these young men are for beginning all over again ; for finding out the principle, and applying it hot, as it were. Naturally, the passion to discover the magic principle, the touchstone, tends to keep them awake, and results in work at all events warm and vibrant. With them there is a good deal of the attitude of the French symbolist poets, the claim to throw over, in the matter of expression, a considerable portion of the tyranny of the grammar book ; to use the

TRANSLATORS' NOTE.

XI

word that best conveys the impression desired, although such use have not the sanction of custom. New-found freedom is apt to realise itself a little too vividly, and first experiments with a language loosed from the moorings of its tradition are like to be carried out with more impulse than balance. But the temerity of these forerunners has its immediate reward (for, in the end, the language they play tricks with thanks them) in the inevitable youth and cleanness of their language ; every word they write is with intention ; the phrase toute faite is abolished at one stroke, and is no longer present to hamper and choke and sodden. The Dutch school I spoke of is called by itself Sensitivist, the word being understood to apply to the method of their literary art, to their manner of seeing and making seen. Of the matter to be treated there is very little left now to fight over. Koughly

TRANSLATORS' NOTE.

speaking, sensiiivism consists, in perhaps its chief element, in exact observation. A person, say, gets a visual impression ; a Sensitivist would describe what he exactly saw, and not what his intellect, going upon his past experience, would tell him he saw. Or a person hears a sound ; the Sensitivist tells the impression the sound gave, and later, perhaps, whence the sound proceeded. VosMEER DE Spie in Eeji Passie, in other respects too an admirable novel, has carried this principle to a point that gives a shock of surprise at every turn. And to give impressions of sounds, this writer adopts the artifice of using terms of colour. Keflection will show at once the intelligence of this distinction of sense and intellect, and a novel of a Sensitivist will show its utility. Most people, knowing that water is transparent, look through it : they see water, green, brown, or whatever it may be in its

TRANSLATORS' NOTE. xiii

density. Some, with a quicker visual sense, look at its surface, and almost always see beau- tiful colour.

Mr. Couperus, the writer of this book Ecstasy, is classed as a member of the school I have described. His faith to the tenets of the Sensi- tivists does not soil qualities which would have their delight under any circumstances. Mr. Couperus is still a young man. This is his third novel ; the other two being Noodlot and Eline Vere, both of which have been translated into English. He has also written a volume of poems : Orchid^een.

JOHN GRAY.

ECSTASY: A STUDY OF HAPPINNESS.

CHAPTER I.

I.

DoLF Van Attema, for an after-dinner walk, had taken the opportunity of calling on his wife's sister, Cecile Van Even, in the Scheveningen Road. He was waiting in her little boudoir, walking to and fro among the rosewood furni- ture and the old moire settees, over and over again, with three or four long steps, measuring the width of the tiny room. On an onyx pedestal,

at the head of a chaise-longue, burned an onyx 1 1

ECSTASY :

lamp, glowing sweetly within its lace shade, a great six-petaled flower of light.

Mevrouw was still with the children, putting them to bed, the maid had told him ; so he could not see his godson, little Dolf, that even- ing. He was sorry. He would have liked to go upstairs and romp with Dolf as he lay in his little bed ; but he remembered Cecile's request, and his promise of an earlier occasion, when a romp of this sort with his uncle had kept the boy lying awake for hours. So he waited, smiling at his obedience, measuring the little boudoir with his steps the steps of a firmly-built man, broad and squat, no longer in his first youth, showing symptoms of baldness under his short brown hair, with small blue-grey eyes, kindly and pleasant of glance, and a mouth which was firm and determined, in spite of the smile, in the midst of the ruddy giowth ot his short Teutonic beard.

A STUDY OF HAPPIN-ESS.

A log smouldered on the little hearth of nickel and gilt, and two little flames flickered discreetly, a fire of peaceful intimacy in that twilight atmosphere of lace-shielded lamplight. Intimacy and discreetness shed over the whole little room an aroma as of violets ; a suggestion of the scent of violets nestled, too, in the soft tints of the draperies and furniture rosewood and rose moire and hung about the corners of the little rosewood writing-table, with its silver appoint- ments, and photographs under smooth glass frames. Above the writing-table hung a small white Venetian mirror. The gentle air of modest refinement, the subdued, almost prudish, tenderness floating about the little hearth, the writing-table, and the chaise-longue, gliding between the quiet folds of the fading hangings, had something soothing, something to quiet the nerves ; so that Dolf presently ceased his work

ECSTASY .

of measurement, sat down, looked around him, and finally remained staring at the portrait of Cecile's husband, the Minister of State, dead eighteen months back.

After that he had not to wait long before Cecile came in. She advanced towards him smiling as he rose from his seat, pressed his hand, excused herself that the children had detained her. She always put them to sleep herself, her two boys, Dolf and Christie, and then they said their prayers, one beside the other in their little beds. The scene came back to Dolf as she spoke of the children ; he had often seen it,

Christie was not well, he was so listless ; she hoped it might not turn out to be measles.

There was motherliness in her voice, but she did not seem a mother as she reclined, girlishly slight, on the chaise-longue, the soft glow be-

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS.

hind her of the lamp on its stem of onyx. She was still in the black of her mourning. Here and there the light behind her touched her jflaxen hair with a frail golden halo ; the loose gown of crape she wore accentuated the girlish slenderness of her figure with the gently curving lines of her long neck and somewhat narrow shoulders ; her arms hung with a certain weari- ness as her hands lay in her lap ; gently curving, too, were the lines of her girlish youth of bust and slender waist, slender as a vase is slender ; so that she seemed a still expectant flower of maidenhood, scarcely more than adolescent, not nearly old enough to be the mother of her children, her two boys of six and seven.

Her features were lost in the shadow the lamplight touching her hair with gold and Dolf could not at first see into her eyes ; but presently, as he grew accustomed to the shadow, these

ECSTASY.

shone softly out from the dusk of her features. She spoke in her low-toned voice, a little faint and soft, like a subdued whisper; she spoke again of Christie, of his godchild Dolf, and. then asked news of Amelie, her sister.

" We are all well, thank you ! You may well ask how we are, we hardly ever see you."

" I so seldom go out," she said as an excuse.

" That is just where you make a mistake ; you do not get enough air, enough society. Amelie was only saying so at dinner to-day, and so I came round to ask you to join us to-morrow evening."

" Is it a party ? "

" No ; nobody."

" Very well, I will come. I shall be very pleased."

" Yes, but why do you never come of your own accord ? "

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS.

" I can't summon up the energy."

" How do you spend your evenings ? "

" I read, I write, or I do nothing at all. The last is really the most delightful ; I only feel myself alive when I do nothing."

He shook his head. " You are a funny girl. You really don't deserve that we should like you as much as we do."

" How ? " she asked, archly.

" Of course it makes no difference to you, you are just as well without us ! "

" You mustn't say that ; it's not true. Your sympathy is very necessary to me, but it takes so much to get me to go out. When I am once in my chair I sit thinking, or not thinking, and I find it difficult to stir."

" What a horribly lazy life ! "

" There it is ! . . . . You like me so nmch : can't you forgive me my laziness ? especially

8 ECSTASY.

when I have promised you to come round to- morrow."

" Very well," he said, laughing. " Of course you are free to live as you choose. We like you just the same, in spite of your neglect."

She laughed, reproached him with using ugly words, and rose slowly to pour out a cup of tea for him. He felt a caressive softness creeping over him, as if he would have liked to stay there a long time, talking and sipping tea in that violet- scented atmosphere of subdued refinement ; he, the man of action, the politician, member of the Second Chamber, every hour of whose day was filled up with committees here and committees there.

" You were saying that you read and wrote a good deal : what do you write ? " he asked.

" Letters."

" Nothing but letters ? ''

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS.

" I like writing letters. I correspond with my brother and sister in India."

" But that is not the only thing ? "

" Oh, no."

" What else do you write then ? "

" You are growing indiscreet, are you not ? "

'' What nonsense ! " he laughed back, as if he were quite within his right. " What is it ? Literature ? "

" No. My diary."

He laughed loudly and joyously. '" You keep a diary ! What do you want with a diary ? Your days are all exactly alike."

" Indeed they are not."

He shrugged his shoulders, quite nonplussed ; she had always been a riddle to him. She knew this, and loved to mystify him.

" Sometimes my days are very nice, and some- times very horrid."

10 ECSTASY:

" Keally !" he said, smiling, looking at her out of his kind little eyes ; but he did not understand.

" And so sometimes I have a great deal to write in my diary," she continued.

" Let me see some of it."

" When I am dead."

A mock shiver ran through his broad shoulders. " Brrr ! how gloomy ! "

" Dead ! What is there gloomy about that ? " she asked, almost gaily ; but he rose to go.

" You frighten me," he said, jestingly. " I must be returning home ; I have a great deal of work to do still. So we see you to-morrow ? "

" Thanks, yes, to-morrow."

He took her hand, and she struck a little silver gong for him to be let out. He stood looking at her a moment, with a smile in his beard.

" Yes, you are a funny girl, and yet .... and

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS. U

yet we all like you ! " he repeated, as if he wished to excuse himself in his own eyes for this sympathy. He bent down and kissed her on the forehead : he was so much older than she.

" I am very glad you all like me," she said, " Till to-morrow, then, goodbye.''

He went, and she was alone. The words of their conversation seemed still to be flouting in the silence, like vanishing atoms. Then the silence became complete, and Cecile sat motion- less, leaning back in the three little cushions of the chaise-longue, black in her crape against the light of the lamp, gazing out before her. All around her descended a vague dream as of little clouds, in which faces shone for an instant, from out of which came low voices without logical sequence of words, an aimless confusion of recol- lection. It was the dreaming of one on whose

1 2 ECSTASY .

brain lay no obsession, either of happiness or of grief, the dreaming of a mind filled with peaceful light ; a wide, still, grey Nirvana, in which all the trouble of thinking flows away, and the thought merely wanders back over former impressions, taking them here and there, without selection. For Cecile's future appeared to her as a monotonous sweetness of unruffled peace, where Dolf and Christie grew up into boys, students, men, while she herself remained nothing but the mother, for in the unconsciousness of her spiritual life she did not know herself. She did not know that she was more wife than mother, however fond she might be of her children. Swathed in the clouds of her dreaming, she did not feel there was something missing, by reason of her widowhood ; she did not feel loneliness nor a need of some one beside her, nor regret that yielding air alone flowed about her, in which her

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS. 13

arms might shape themselves and grope in vain for something to embrace. The capacity for these needs was there, but so deep hidden in her soul's unconsciousness that she did not know of its existence, that one day it might assert itself and rise up slowly, up and up, an apparition of clearer melancholy. For such melancholy as was in her dreaming seemed to her to belong to the past, to the memory of the kind husband she had lost, and never, never, to the present, to an unrealised sense of her loneliness.

Whoever had told her now that something was wanting in her life would have roused her indig- nation ; she herself imagined that she had all she wanted ; and highly she valued the calm contentment of the innocent egoism in which she and her children breathed, a contentment she thought complete. When she dreamed, as now, about nothing in particular little dream-clouds

U ECSTASY.

fleeing across the field of her imagination, with other cloudlets in the wake sometimes great tears would well in her eyes, and trickle slowly down her cheek ; but to her these were only tears of an unspeakably vague melancholy, a light load upon her heart, barely oppressive, and there for some reason she did not know, for she had ceased to mourn the loss of her husband. In this manner she could pass whole evenings, simply sitting dreaming, never oppressed with herself, nor reflecting how the people outside hurried and tired themselves, aimlessly, without being happy, while she was happy ; happy in the cloudland of her dreams.

The hours sped, and her hand was too heavy to reach for the book upon the table beside her ; heaviness at last permeated her so thoroughly that one o'clock arrived, and she could not yet decide to get up and go to her bed.

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS. 15

II.

Next evening, when Cecile entered the Van Attemas' drawing-room, slowly, with languorous steps, in the sinuous black of her crape, Dolf advanced towards her and took her hand :

" I hope you will not feel annoyed. Quaerts called, and Dina had told the servants we were at home. I am sorry . . . ."

" It does not matter ! " she whispered back, a little irritated nevertheless, in her sensitiveness, at unexpectedly meeting this stranger, whom she did not remember ever to have seen at Dolf's, who now rose from where he had been sitting with old Mrs. Hoze, Polf's great-aunt, Amelie, and the two daughters, Anna and Suzette. Cecile kissed the old lady, and greeted the rest of the circle in turn, welcomed with a smile by all of them. Dolf introduced :

16 ECSTASY.

" My friend Taco Quaerts. . . . Mrs. Van Even, my sister-in-law."

They sat a little scattered round the great fire on the open hearth, the piano close to them in the comer, its draped back turned to them, and Jules, the youngest boy, sitting behind it, playing Rubinstein's Romance in Es, and so absorbed that he had not heard his aunt come in.

" Jules " Dolf cried.

" Leave him alone," said Cecile.

The boy did not reply, and went on playing. Cecile, across the piano, saw his tangled hair and his eyes abstracted in the music. A suspicion of melancholy slowly rose within her; like a weight it climbed up her breast and stifled her breathing. From time to time forte notes fall- ing suddenly from Jules' fingers gave her little shocks in her throat, and a strange feeling of uncertainty seemed winding her about as with

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS. 17

vague meshes ; a feeling not new to her, in

which she seemed no longer to possess herself,

to be lost and wandering in search of herself, in

which she did not know what she was thinking,

nor what at this very moment she might say.

Something dropped into her brain, a momentary

suggestion. Her head sank a little, and, without

hearing distinctly, it seemed to her that once

before she had heard this romance played so,

exactly so, as Jules now played it, very, very long

ago, in some former existence ages agone, in just

the same circumstances, in this very circle of

people, before this very fire ; the tongues of the

flame shot up with the same flickerings as from

the logs of ages back, and Suzette blinked with

the same expression she had worn then on that

former. . . .

Why was it ? that she should be sitting here

again now, in the midst of them all? Why

2

18 ECSTASY:

should it be ? sitting like this round a fire, listen- ing to music ? How strange it was, and what strange things there were in this world ! . . . . Still, it was pleasant to be in this company, sweetly sociable, quiet, without many words, the music behind the piano dying plaintively away until it suddenly stopped. Mrs. Hoze's voice had a ring of sympathy as she murmured in Cecile's

ear :

" So we are getting you back my child ?

You are coming out from your solitude again ? " Cecile pressed her hand with a little laugh : "But have I ever hidden myself? I have

always been at home."

" Yes, but we had to come to you. You have

always remained at home, have you not ? " " You are not angry with me, are you ? " "No, dear, of course not; you have had so

much sorrow."

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS. 19

" Yes ; I seem to have lost everything."

How was it she suddenly realised this ? She never had had any feeling but of contentment in her own home, among the clouds of her day- dreams, but outside, among other people, she immediately felt that she had lost everything, everything,

" But you have your children . . . ."

" Yes "

She answered faintly, wearily, with a sense of loneliness, oh ! terrible loneliness, like one float- ing aimlessly in space, borne upon thinnest air, in which yearning arms grope in vain.

Mrs. Hoze stood up. Dolf came to take her into the other room to play whist.

" And you too, Cecile ? " he asked.

" No ; you know I don't . . . ."

He did not press her ; there were Quaeits and the girls who would play.

20 ECSTASY :

" What are you doing there, Jules ? " he asked, glancing over the piano.

The boy had remained sitting there, for- gotten. He now rose and appeared, tall, grown out of his strength, with strange eyes.

" What were you doing ? "

" I . , . . I was looking for something .... a piece of music."

" Don't sit moping in that style, my boy ! " growled Dolf kindly, with his deep voice. " What's become of those cards again, Amelie ? "

" I don't know," said his wife, looking about vaguely. " Where are the cards, Anna ? "

" Aren't they in the box with the counters ? "

" No," Dolf grumbled, " nothing is ever where it should be."

Anna got up, looked, found the cards in the drawer of a buhl cabinet. Amelie too had risen ;

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS. 21

she stood arranging the music on the piano. She was for ever ordering things in her rooms, and immediately forgetting where she had put them, tidying with her fingers, and perfectly absent in her mind.

"Anna, draw a card too. You can come in later ! " cried Dolf from the other room.

The two sisters remained alone with Jules.

The boy sat down on a footstool near Cecile.

" Mamma, do leave my music alone."

Am61ie sat down near Cecile.

" Is Christie better ? "

" He is a little livelier to-day."

" I am glad. Have you never met Quaerts before ? "

" No."

" Eeally ? He comes here so often."

Cecile looked through the open folding-doors nt the card table. Two candles stood upon it. Mrs.

22 ECSTASY .

Hoze's pink face was lit up clearly, smooth and stately ; her coiffure gleamed silver-grey. . Quaerts sat opposite her ; Cecile noticed the round, vanishing silhouette of his head, the hair cut very close, thick and black above the glittering white streak of his collar. His arms made little move- ments as he threw down a card, or gathered up a trick. His person had something about it of great power, something energetic and sturdy, something of e very-day life, which Cecile dis- liked.

" Are the girls fond of cards ? "

" Suzette is, Anna not so much ; she is not quite so ' brisk.' "

Cecile saw that Anna sat behind her father, staring with eyes which did not understand.

" Do you go out much with them now ? " Cecile asked again.

" Yes, T am obliged to : Suzette likes going

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS. 23

out, but not Anna. Suzette will be a pretty girl, don't you think so ? "

" Suzette is a nasty coquettish thing," said Jules. " At our last dinner-party . . . ."

He suddenly stopped.

" No, I can't tell you. It's not right to te tales, is it, auntie ? "

Cecile smiled.

" No, certainly it's not."

" I want always to do what is right."

" That is very good."

" No, no ! " he said deprecatingly. " Everything seems to me so bad, do you know. Why is everything so bad, auntie ? "

" But there is much that is good too, Jules."

He shook his head.

" No, no ! " he repeated. " Everything is bad. Everything is very bad. Everything is selfishness. Just mention something that is not selfish ! "

24 ECSTASY .

" Parental love ! "

Bat Jules shook his head again.

"Parental love is ordinary selfishness. Children are a part of their parents, who only love them- selves when they love their children."

" Jules ! " cried Am^lie, " you talk far too rashly. You know I don't like it : you are much too young to talk like that. One would think you knew everything."

The boy was silent.

" And I always say that we never know any- thing. We never know anything, don't you think so too, Cecile ? I, at least, never know anything, never . . . ."

She looked round the room absently. Her fingers smoothed the fringe of her chair, tidying up. Cecile put her arm softly round Jules' neck.

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS. 25

III.

It was Quaerts' turn to sit out from the card- table, and although Dolf pressed him to continue playing he rose.

" I want to go and talk to Mrs, Van Even," Cecile heard him say.

She saw him coming towards the room where she still sat with Amelie Jules sitting at her feet -engaged in desultory talk, for Amelie could never maintain a conversation, always wandering and losing the threads. She did not know why, but Cecile suddenly wore a most serious ex- pression, as if she were discussing very important matters with her sister ; though all she said was:

"Jules should really take lessons in harmony, when he composes so nicely . . . ."

Quaerts had approached her ; he sat down next

26 ECSTASY.

tliem, with a scarcely perceptible shyness in his manner, a gentle hesitation in the brusque force of his movements.

But Jules fired up.

" No, auntie ; I want to be taught as little as possible. I don't want to learn names and principles and classifications. I could not do it. I only compose like this, like this . . . . " suiting his phrase with a vague movement of his fingers.

" Jules can hardly read, it's a shame ! " said Am^lie.

" And he plays so sweetly," said Cecile.

" Yes, auntie ; I remember things, I pick them out on the piano. Ah ! it's not very clever ; it just comes out of myself, you know."

" That is just what is fine."

" No, no ! You have to know the names and principles and classifications. You must have

A STUDY OF HAPPIKESS. 27

that in everything. I shall never learn technique ; I can't do anything."

He closed his eyes a moment ; a look of sadness flitted across his restless face.

" You know a piano is so .... so big, such a piece of furniture, isn't it? But a violin, oh, how- delightful ! You hold it to you like this, against your neck, almost against your heart ; it is almost part of you, and you caress it, like this, you could almost kiss it ! You feel the soul of the violin throbbing inside the wood. And then you only have a string or two, which sing every- thing. Oh, a violin, a violin ! "

" Jules . . . ." Amelie began.

" And, oh, auntie, a harp ! A harp, like this, between your legs, a harp which you embrace with both your arms : a harp is just like an angel, with long golden hair. Ah, I have never yet played on a harp ! "

28 ECSTASY:

" Jul«s, leav« off ! " cried Amelie, angrily. " You drive me silly with that nonsense ! I wonder you are not ashamed, before Mr. Quaerts."

Jules looked up in surprise.

" Before Taco ? Do you think I have anything to be ashamed of, Taco ? "

" Of course not, my boy."

The sound of his voice was like a caress. Cecile looked at him, astonished ; she would have expected him to make fun of Jules. She did not understand him, but she disliked him very much, so healthy and strong, with his energetic face and his fine expressive mouth, so different from Amelie and Jules and herself.

" Of course not, my boy."

Jules looked up at his mother contemptuously, as if he knew better.

" You see! Taco is a good chap." He twisted

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS. 29

his footstool round towards Qiiaerts, and laid his head against his knee.

" Jules ! "

" Pray let him be, mevrouw."

" Every one spoils that boy . . . ."

" Except yourself," said Jules.

" I ! I ! " cried Amelie, indignantly. " I spoil you out and out ! I wish I knew how not to give way to you ! I wish I could send you to the Indies ! Then you would be more of a man ! But I can't do it ; and your father spoils you too. I don't know what will become of you!"

" What is to become of you, Jules ? " asked Quaerts.

" I don't know. I mustn't go to college, I am too weak a doll to do much work."

'' Would you like to go to the Indies some- day?"

30 ECSTASY

" Yes, with you .... Not alone ; oh, to be alone, always alone ! You will see : I shall always be alone, and it is so terrible to be alone ! "

" But, Jules, you are not alone now," said Cecile, reproachfully.

" Oh, yes, yes, in myself I am alone, always alone . . . ." He pressed himself against Quaerts' knee.

" Jules, don't talk so stupidly," cried Amelie, nervously.

"Yes, yes!" said Jules, with a sudden half sob. " I will hold my tongue ! But don't talk about me any more ; oh, I beg you, don't talk about me ! " He locked his hands and implored them, with dread in his face. They all stared at him, but he buried his face in Quaerts' knees, as though deadly frightened of something ....

A STUDY OF HAPFINESS. 31

IV.

Anna had played execrably, to Suzette's despair: she could not even remember the trumps ! and Dolf called to his wife :

" Amelie, do come in for a rubber ; at least if Quaerts does not wish to. You can't give your daughter very many points, but you are not quite so bad ! "

" I would rather stay and talk to Mrs. Van Even," said Quaerts.

" Go and play without minding me, if you prefer, Mr. Quaerts," said Cecile, in a cold voice, as towards some one she utterly disliked.

Amelie dragged herself away with an unhappy face. She, too, did not play a brilliant game, and Suzette always lost her temper when she made mistakes.

" I have so long been hoping to make your

32 ECSTASY :

acquaintaiice, toevrouw, that I should not like to miss the opportunity to-night," answered Quaerts.

She looked at him : it troubled her that she could not understand him. She knew him to be somewhat of a gallant. There were stories in which the name of a married woman was coupled with his. Did he wish to try his blandishments upon her ? She had no particular hankering for that sort of pastime ; she had never cared for flirtations.

" Why ? " she asked, calmly, immediately re- gretting the word ; for her question sounded like coquetry, and she intended anything but that.

" Why ? " he repeated. He looked at her in slight embarrassment as he sat near her, with Jules on the ground between them, against his knee, his eyes closed.

A STUDY OF HAPPINESS. 33

" Because .... because," he stammered, " be- cause you are my friend's sister, I suppose, and I used never to see you here. . . ."

She made no answer : in her seclusion she had forgotten how to talk, and she did not take the least trouble about it.

"I used often to see you formerly at the theatre," said Quaerts, " when Mr. Van Even was still alive."

" At the opera ? " she said.

" Yes."

" Ah ! I did not know you then."

" No."

" I have not been out in the evening for a long time, on account of my mourning."

" And I always choose the evening to pay my visits here."

"So it is easily explained that we have never met."

34 ECSTASY .

They were silent for a moment. It seemed to him she spoke very coldly.

" I should like to go to the opera ! " murmured Jules with closed eyes. " Ah no, after all, I think I would rather not."

" Dolf told me that you read a great deal," Quaerts continued. " Do you keep up with modern literature?"

" A little. I do not read so very much."

" No ? "

" Oh, no. I have two children, and conse- quently not much time for it. Besides, it has no particular fascination for me ; life is so much more romantic than any novel."

" So you are a philosopher ? "

" I ? Oh, no, I assure you, Mr. Quaerts. I am the most commonplace woman in the world."

She spoke with her wicked little laugh and her cold voice : the voice and the laugli she

A STUDY OF JIAPPINESS. 35

employed when she feared lest she should be wounded in her secret sensitiveness, and when therefore she hid herself deep within herself, offering to the outside world something very different from what she really was. Jules opened his eyes and sat looking at her, and his steady glance troubled her.

" You live in a charming place, on the Sche- veningen Koad."

" Yes."

She realised suddenly that her coldness amounted to rudeness, and she did not wish this, even if she did dislike him. She threw herself back negligently ; she asked at random, quite without concern, merely for the sake of conversation :

" Have you many relations in the Hague ? "

" No ; my father and mother live at Velp,