The scorpion

Myra sat on the window-sill in the bright, friendly mansard room, smoking a cigarette and polishing her nails. On the white cover of the sewing-table which Myra had degraded or advanced to a dressing-table, a thick, little, black book lay open—The New Testament.

The door was pushed ajar and her Cousin Herman insinuated himself through the crack. But he stopped midway and stood toying with the latch.

“Coming down for supper, or have you still got a headache?” he asked laconically.

“Shut the door, child,” Myra commanded in a low voice. She did not want the cigarette smoke to float downstairs and assail Aunt Antonia’s sensitive nostrils.

The boy closed the door but continued to toy with the latch.

“Why do you hang on to the door?” asked Myra, amused. “Come in, come in! Take a seat!”

The boy hesitated. “Of course, we’re not supposed to come up here,” he ventured. “But if your headache is better, I guess you can’t be sick any more!”

“Sick?” said Myra in some surprise. “Are you supposed not to come up here because I’m sick?”

“Yes,” said the twelve-year-old, too shrewdly for his age, “because it’s contagious!”

“Ah, Mannie!” Myra uttered a short laugh. “My sickness certainly isn’t contagious.”

“What kind of a sickness have you?” The boy drew nearer curiously.

Myra hesitated. The boy cast a covetous glance at the cigarettes.

“Give me one!” he begged suddenly.

“Certainly,” said Myra. “As many as you like. But you’ve got to mail a letter for me, secretly, so that not a soul sees you. Can you be depended on?” Myra glanced at him sharply and searchingly. The boy’s honor was touched.

“Do you think I’d let myself get caught?” he said with conviction. “What do you think I am, a dummy?”

He received the cigarettes and the letter and stowed them so artfully in his blouse that Myra smiled. “This is not the first thing he’s hidden from mother’s sharp eyes,” she thought.

But he was still reluctant to go. He hesitated for a while and then came out with it. “Say, what kind of sickness have you got?”

Myra wondered what she should tell him. Then her glance fell on the cigarette case. “Well, Mannie,” she said after a pause, “I was bitten by a scorpion, and now the poison is all through my blood. And you know, the only thing that will cure a scorpion’s bite is scorpion’s poison. But there aren’t any scorpions here. It’s all superstition that it’s contagious. It’s only phalanges that are so poisonous you die from washing in a basin that’s been used by somebody who has been bitten by one. Your mother has mixed them up.”

“Then it’s not contagious?” asked the boy, venturing a step nearer.

“No!” Myra shook her head with a doleful smile, “I believe that people can die of it—but it’s not contagious.”

* * *

Young Herman, who undertook to convey the letter to the post-office with much secrecy and a most important air, was firmly convinced that it must be a love letter which had been confided to him. He would have been greatly astonished could he have learned that the letter spoke more of him, of little Herman himself, than of love.

“Formerly I used to hate my Uncle’s children,” Myra wrote after a matter-of-fact recital of the events of the past few days. “I had no reason to hate them except that they had such protruding ears. Tell me, dear, what has changed me so completely? Now I see character in every childish action, I see destinies inextricably bound up with those characters. I see that little Anna is going to have a hard time of it in life—not merely because her ears stand out—and I feel that I would like to help her, to give her something, to multiply the few happy hours of her life....

“I have made a discovery, Olga. You’ll laugh at me. My Aunt Antonia has closed the bookcase to me and laid the New Testament on my table. I have a suspicion that she meant to punish me with it. A year ago, at the height of my rebellion, I flung it against the wall and would never have believed that I could actually read it again. And yet we’ve made friends once more! What a glorious book it is! But you’ll laugh at my discovery of the fact. Is there anything beautiful on earth that you do not know and love?”

* * *

Uncle George and Aunt Antonia were most agreeably surprised by Myra’s behavior. They had expected an unmanageable child whom it would be necessary to tame, if the occasion required, force. They found a quite perfect and lovable young lady. Hence they disliked to be always restricting and supervising her, and allowed her one liberty after another.

Myra took full advantage of these liberties and began preparations for her flight. Day or night, she had never had any other intention and her constant preoccupation with such plans kept her in a state of almost wantonly happy excitement.

But the first problem was where to find money. Myra sold everything with which she could possibly dispense. Still it was not enough. She began to dispose of articles from the household. But that was difficult and impractical. In the first place, it might be discovered before she was gone, and then all would be lost. In the second place, the results did not repay the trouble it required, and it hurt her to see valuable things given away for a song.

One day Uncle George received a large sum of money by mail, and locked it away in the desk, in Myra’s presence.

Myra stared as if hypnotized at the locked desk. Here was all she needed, but how could she get at it?

She lay all night without sleeping, or even trying to. Her mind was working feverishly. Should she break open the desk that night? There was no train at that hour which would be certain to bring her to the city before daybreak.

Should she take a wax impression of the lock? The locksmith might become suspicious if she asked him to make the key. Should she steal the key-ring? They would miss it immediately and search the whole house. Should she remove the key to the desk from the ring? They would immediately notice that this most important key was missing.

The next day Myra procured a half dozen keys from the locksmith. She told him some story about a key to the bookcase which she had lost, and was delighted at the assured and unembarrassed manner with which she told it.

That night she stole down and tried the keys. Nearly all were easy to insert, but they did not unlock the desk.

Next day she asked for her Uncle’s keys in order to get a book from the library. While she was kneeling in front of the bookcase, she removed the key to the desk from the ring. In its place, she attached one resembling it.

She took a book from the case without seeing what it was.

As she handed the keys back to Uncle George, she felt sure he must hear the furious throbbing of her pulses. She thought her face must be as white as chalk and made an effort to set her frozen lips in a smile.

Her Uncle took the keys without glancing up from his newspaper, and with a brief “Thanks,” thrust them into his trousers pocket.

Myra packed her suitcase and sent a telegram. Late in the afternoon, she carried the suitcase to the station.

At half past seven they sat down to supper. The train left at half past eight. During supper Myra complained of a headache. At her request her Uncle gave her a headache-tablet and advised her to lie down immediately.

Myra said, “good night,” while the others were still at table.

In order to reach the stairs from the dining-room, she had to pass through the darkened living-room. While she listened to their voices in the adjoining room, expecting at every moment to hear a chair scrape as someone rose, she unlocked the desk and crammed a handful of bills into her pocket.

In the hall her coat was hanging, a piece of forethought. She slipped into it and opened the little rear-door that gave on the garden. She did not dare pass the dining-room windows in front.

There was nothing difficult about swinging herself over the low garden fence. She looked back once. That side of the house was completely dark. She listened. Not a door opened or window rattled. Then she turned and ran as if the Devil were after her, across the fields, to the station.

* * *

During the journey on the train, she fought against an agony of fear. She saw herself pursued, hand-cuffed. The train seemed to crawl along at an intolerable pace, and to stop much longer than required at each station.

At times she felt that it would be better to get out and run, simply to run and run and run until she had no more breath or strength, than to wait, an inactive, restless captive, until the lazy engine brought her to her destination.

With sudden terror she thought of the possibility that her telegram might not arrive in time or that Olga might not be at home to receive it.

And what in God’s name was she to do if Olga were not at the station!

To go home was impossible. She could already feel the straight-jacket and hand-cuffs. Should she rush through the night to Olga? Ring a strange door-bell and wake up the people in the pension? What right had she to do that?

There was nothing left but to take a room for a night at a hotel. But where would she be safe? Early next morning they would be searching everywhere for her. She shuddered to think of what lay ahead.

She shuddered, too, at the thought of a lonely night in a strange room.

There were moments, too, when she regarded her own actions with astonishment, terrified by her daring. Suddenly feeling the bills crinkling in her waist, she asked herself with amazement, “Good God, how did I ever manage to do it?”

At eleven twenty the train arrived at the depot. The light and the tumult in the buzzing hall whose vast vault was lost in darkness, was still more alarming than the silent night of the fields.

But Olga Radó was there.

Amidst that sea of hurrying, scurrying, searching people she stood perfectly still, but drawn up a little taller than usual. Surrounded by stupid, stolid, deformed faces, her own pale face shone brightly. From under her dark brows, which were knitted as if threateningly, her dark eyes sparkled and peered along the line of coaches.

Myra flung open the door before the train stopped. Regardless of all, she forced her way through the crowd, jabbing her suitcase into people’s knee-joints. She stretched out her hand, no, she clutched like a falling man at a support, crying between tears and laughter, “Olga!”

Olga’s face which had turned abruptly to her, remained grave. Not the ghost of a smile relaxed those tense features.

“Myra!” she said in her deep voice. “My child! What folly are you up to now!”

Myra was a little taken aback. Not much. She would have preferred another reception—but what difference did these words make to her or the tone of these words? Olga was there. She gazed into her face, held her hand, listened to her voice.

Now everything was all right.

“Are you angry?” asked Myra, her eyes laughing, while she clung to Olga’s hand. “If you really are angry, you old Philistine, I won’t even dare confess all the wicked things I’ve done!”

“I’m not angry,” said Olga earnestly, “I simply refuse to be in any way responsible. If you’ve run away, that’s your affair! I have not influenced you to it by a single word, a single glance. I knew nothing about it. I want to get that straight now and forever!”

“Yes,” said Myra, “but as soon as you’ve got it straight, perhaps you’ll tell me whether or not you’re glad to see me.”

“If I must be candid,” said Olga with a vague smile and without looking at Myra, “I’m not unglad that you’re here, but I’m a little disturbed. Have you reflected at all as to what is to become of you now?”

Myra had thought about it. But reflected? No, that was certainly not the right word. She had thought of herself as coming to Olga in order to be with Olga, to remain with Olga. She had pictured herself in Olga’s comfortable room, the one room in which she had known happy hours, had meant to hide herself there, never to go into the street, never to go home—now she was aware of the folly of the idea and did not dare to declare it to the shrewd eyes watching her.

“I don’t know,” she said pitifully. “I only know that I can never go home, never, never, never, never! I’ll look for a job as a nursemaid or a chambermaid—anything!”

“Then you might just as well have remained where you were. They certainly wouldn’t have beaten you or let you go hungry. Or do you expect that you’ll have more freedom as a maid?”

“Yes,” said Myra defiantly, “at least I’ll have my Sundays free and nobody can forbid me to spend them with you!”

“Do what you like as far as I’m concerned!” Olga stood still and closed her eyes for a moment as if in mortal terror. “You are positively brutal, Myra! Don’t you see how you’re going to incriminate me! I can’t accept responsibility for this, I can’t!”

They were still standing on the platform which was by then almost emptied of its swarming crowds. Only a few night-travellers were still hurrying toward the exit.

Myra felt tired and shattered; the light suitcase was like a ton in her hand. The draught in the vast hall made her shiver.

“Can’t we sit down in the waiting-room for ten minutes?” she asked dejectedly. “Perhaps if I think about it quietly, something will occur to me that I can do. But if you feel so tired, why don’t you go home?”

“Yes,” said Olga, “and leave you sitting here alone all night in the depot! Have you gone clean crazy, my dear child?”

They sat in the empty waiting-room, warming their cold fingers on their glasses of hot tea. Myra related the story of her flight. She took the crinkled bills out of her waist and thrust them into her pocket.

Myra had almost expected Olga to laugh. While she was telling the story, the whole business struck her like an incredibly comical adventure. But Olga’s face remained intensely serious.

“And now?” she asked.

“I’m going to a hotel!”

“And I?”

“You are going back to your pension!”

“I won’t leave you alone.”

“Come with me, then,” said Myra with a flare of hope.

“Yes,” said Olga bitterly, “and the first thing tomorrow morning the police will come and arrest us. No thank you. I’ll probably be accused of making you commit grand larceny.”

“Then,” said Myra after further reflection, “in that case we’ll have to behave like real embezzlers. That is, take the next train and keep going. We’ll simply get off at some station or other and go to a hotel. From there I’ll write my father, and beg him first of all to straighten out the money business. Perhaps he’ll be reasonable and I’ll be able to come to some agreement with him. In six months, I’ll receive my grandmother’s legacy. If my father won’t give me anything, I’ll borrow against my legacy: it can be done somehow.” Myra looked at the huge schedule. “The next train leaves at midnight!”

Olga’s face had lost its stern expression. Her eyes were laughing with a deep joy. But she still hesitated.

“You’re absolutely crazy!” she said. “No night-dress, no toothbrush!”

“I have linen enough,” said Myra eagerly, “and we can buy a toothbrush!”

“What ideas you do have!” said Olga slowly.

Myra saw that she was already half convinced.

“Grand ideas!” she said radiantly. “Fascinating, entrancing ideas. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, but I never would have thought of it,” said Olga emphatically. “You talked me into it. It’s your idea and no one’s else!”

“Absolutely! I’m much too proud of it to let anybody else claim the authorship.”

* * *

The midnight train was a passenger train. They sat alone in a compartment for non-smokers, that was dimly illuminated by the blue-shaded light in the ceiling. They made an unsuccessful effort to remove the shade in order to turn on the little gas flame full force.

“Let it be,” said Myra in fun. “It’s better for us if the compartment is dark, then our pursuers can’t recognize us from outside.”

Myra was in such high spirits that she elaborated the idea into a merry comedy and even induced Olga to take part.

They played at flight. They stooped whenever anybody passed outside. They breathed freely again as soon as the train had started. Myra did her hair differently so as not to be recognized. They “bribed” the conductor with the “sum” of three marks not to let anybody enter their compartment and afterwards, were worried lest the enormous tip might cause them to be suspected as embezzlers.

“You know,” said Myra mysteriously, “we certainly ought not to get off at the place our tickets call for. If we do, they’ll be after us immediately. We’ll simply get off at some other stop.”

“Yes,” Olga agreed, “seven stops from here. Seven is a mystic number.”

Myra was enthusiastic. “It’s beautiful, it’s wonderful! We go on, and we don’t know where. We get off, and we don’t know where. We’ll wake up early tomorrow morning in a strange city, and won’t know the name of it.”

“How strange that sounds!” said Olga, paraphrasing the words. “Like something really profound! We live—and we don’t know how! We love—and we don’t know why! We die—and we don’t know when!”

“No,” said Myra, “I don’t know when! Thank God! But I do know why! Also, thank God!”

The ghost of a shadow seemed to pass over Olga’s face as if she wished not to hear what Myra said. “I used to long so dreadfully to know when I would die,” she said reflectively. “I think it is so unjust for us to know absolutely nothing about how much time we have before us. We ought to have a right to regulate that! I used to envy a friend of mine who died of tuberculosis. She knew exactly—so much of my lung is left, I can live so much longer provided I economize, provided I spare myself. Or I have the choice of squandering the rest, of throwing away what’s left. That must be beautiful! As it is, you know, I never can leave my room until it is cleaned up, because I suffer so from the fixed idea—who knows if I shall ever return. The thought is so appalling to me that some time I may have just to step out of life and leave everything in disorder behind me!”

Myra was on the verge of tears. She wanted to conceal, to dispel the sadness that was tormenting her, so she said with affected rudeness, “Don’t you think you’re really insane? Perhaps you’ll be good enough to choose some other topic of conversation for this dismal night-journey! If you don’t, I’m going to sit in the next compartment until you’ve finished your meditations.”

“Child!” said Olga, smiling and clasping her hand. “You are quite right! Scold me! It’s because of my stupid oracle!”

“Oracle?” said Myra, astounded.

“Haven’t you found that out about me yet? I’m like these old peasant women who, whenever they are in trouble, stick a knitting-needle in the Bible and fish out a quotation.”

“But you haven’t got a knitting-needle,” said Myra, laughing.

“Nor a Bible either! The Bible must be an heirloom. A new one is no good. But you really don’t have to have a Bible for that purpose: you can take any book and open it. It’s remarkable, what answers you sometimes find. I asked yesterday, for example—when your telegram came—whether I should go to the depot....”

“And?” asked Myra in suspense.

“Oh, it’s all silliness,” said Olga with a wry smile. She turned away and stared intently out of the window into the black night that was flitting by them.

“Of course, it’s silliness,” said Myra sincerely. “But it worries you all the same. And you won’t see how really silly it is until you’ve told me. So tell me—then we can laugh at it together.”

Olga turned to her again. She was trying to maintain an uncertain smile.

“When Radomonte Gozaga entered Genoa—in some campaign of vengeance or other, I don’t remember just what—he wore a doublet on which was embroidered a scorpion. Under it was the legend: Qui vivens laedit, morte medetur.[1] Is that an answer or not?”

[1] “What life wounds, is healed in death.”

Myra seized Olga’s hand. She must rend some veil that the words, which had been uttered with such effort, had thrown over her.

“You are certainly insane!” she said. But her voice did not ring true. She had to clear her throat of a sudden huskiness.

* * *

The brakes ground under the coaches. “The sixth stop!” said Myra mysteriously, her eyes big. “The next is our fate. I hope to heaven, it isn’t a large city.”

When the train was once more in motion, they began to make ready to get off. The next stop might be ten minutes or an hour distant—they did not know.

They had placed their suitcase on the seat, and were standing side by side at the window, their faces pressed against the pane in an effort to penetrate the darkness rushing past.

“There are lots of woods in this country,” said Olga, “pine woods!”

“Yes,” Myra exulted, “we’ll go walking in them tomorrow.”

The woods ended. A slate-gray, clouded sky hung above long, gently rolling, dark fields. More trees, at first singly, then a thick black woods that extended to the railway embankment, and above which not a scrap of sky was to be seen.

Again, the trees grew more sparsely, disappeared. Again, broad fields. Then at a distance they could not estimate, as though set between the gently rolling furrows, a tiny light twinkled. Another, and another.

“Look! Look!” cried Myra, in raptures. “Maybe that’s our stop.”

“Strange,” said Olga, “maybe one of those lights will be in our window tomorrow morning. And perhaps we’ll have a feeling of home when we pass those lights ten years hence. But now we don’t even know the name of the place.”

A watchman’s shack flitted past. Now and again a section of shiny rails was lit up by a lantern. Once more woods grew right up to the tracks, but more open, criss-crossed by numerous paths. Then a hedge ran along beside them for a while. After the clipped hedge, a bright wooden fence. Behind it, quite close at hand, the outlines of individual houses already loomed darkly. A rather smoky lantern, and gates that closed a dark tree-bordered highway.

Other bits of woods and gardens. Beyond them, little light after little light. The train was slowing, creaking, puffing. Wooden columns flashed out suddenly, supporting the roof of a narrow shelter. The train stopped.

Olga seized the suitcase, lifted the latch and sprang down the high steps. Myra followed her, in a strange dreamy trance. She was worn out by the two sleepless nights; her senses, sharpened a thousandfold, seemed to notice everything. The thin film of hoar-frost that covered the earth and the trunks of the trees, the coarse faces of two women in peasant’s attire, who hurried past, the conductor’s long-drawn shout, the leisurely slamming of doors, the red hands in knitted mittens, of the man at the guard-gates, the little dark room, its walls pasted up with bills, and the worn benches, the whistle of the departing train behind her—all was impressed on her mind with ineradicable distinctness.

Olga pushed open a door, descended a flight of stone steps, and they were standing on the uneven flag-stones of a broad square, feebly illuminated by the lights of the station.

Left and right—pitch darkness. As far as they could see—nothing but bare, twisted trees, unpaved, sodden paths, slightly frozen over.

At a little distance there was something that resembled the beginning of a street.

Olga stood still and looked at Myra with a smile. “Well,” she said, “are you shivering already? What would you give now to be safe at home under a down-comfortable, with the electric light to turn on whenever you want it?”

“Nothing at all!” said Myra defiantly. “On the contrary, I think it’s extremely pleasant right here. And if we don’t find any accommodations, I shall mind it for your sake only. It was I who led you into this excursion!”

“Oh, for all I care,” said Olga deprecatingly, “for all I care, we can spend the night on those benches in the station. But if you’re afraid, we can go back and ask the man at the guard-gates if there’s a hotel.”

“No,” Myra insisted, “don’t ask. Let’s go on.”

A few hundred paces ahead of them, the houses began. Dark and sleeping or with an occasional lighted window. They stood rather apart, surrounded by their gardens and fields. The road was paved with cobbles. Presently the houses stood closer together, began to form a street which was illuminated by flickering lanterns.

The street broadened to a kind of market-place. It was a dreary polygon, without any artistic embellishments, lime-trees, or a purling spring. On one side, was a long, squat, gray box with a broad roof, sloping low, and several dormer-windows. Over the broad arch of the dark entrance a tin star was swaying, not unlike a shaving-basin, while a big blue lantern, swinging from a beautifully curved arm, illuminated the words: “At the Sign of the Blue Star. Hotel and stable accommodations.”

“Look,” said Olga, “even a hotel!”

They looked for a night-bell. But they could not find even a door. Beside the entrance-way was a handle for ringing a big bell at the end of a rusty iron rod. But it was difficult to reach. Myra made an attempt.

“Don’t bother,” said Olga, “that’s not for poor pedestrians like us. Moreover, we’ll wake up the whole town. Let’s try inside instead.”

They ventured into the dark cavern of the entrance, but did not get far. Before the passage could open into a court, a huge rack-wagon barred the way. But beside the wagon they found a flight of steps and a little wooden door in the wall. They felt a metal knob, tugged at it and succeeded in evoking a shrill ring that made them start, so hair-raisingly did it shatter the silence.

Steps, voices, a light.

A sleepy-looking individual appeared in the doorway, slippers on his bare feet, in grayish-yellow underwear, over which he had managed in some remarkable fashion to pull on a jacket that he held closed under his chin with his left hand. In his upraised right he carried a wax candle.

Olga took over the management of negotiations.

She told the sleep-drunk man a long tale of the train by which they had just arrived, and of how the “Blue Star” had had been recommended to her, and how she regretted having had to disturb his slumbers, but the trains arrived at such uncomfortable hours, and they couldn’t remain on the streets, and, of course, the people at the station had directed them here.

The man rallied sufficiently to say, “One moment, please!” vanished and left them standing there.

They looked at one another and laughed, waiting patiently. After some time a gas-lamp without a globe was lighted farther up the stairs, and the man reappeared, this time in black trousers.

The fact that he was collarless and wore neither a jacket nor stockings did not prevent a certain deftness of his movements from revealing at once that he was “mine host.”

He conducted them into a big, dark, cold room, jumped up on the cushion of a chair and lit the gas-jet. It was evidently the “Blue Star’s” “imperial suite.”

“Are you serious?” asked Myra timidly. “I was afraid your sense of beauty would be in constant agony! Those pictures! And those artificial flowers, and the plush-upholstery!”

“Simply splendid!” said Olga. “It just couldn’t be any different. I’d have been terribly disappointed if those fighting stags were not here, or that wonderful Empire maiden with the apple-tree in bloom. Do you think I want to see Chippendale furniture or a Kokoschka in the ‘Blue Star’? God forbid! As it is, I think it’s simply heavenly!”

Myra unpacked her suitcase, spread night-gowns on the bed, set bottles and boxes on the wash-table. Olga walked about noiselessly, whistling with soft, sweet flute-tones. She stopped before each picture, studying it with childish enthusiasm, while she made up long stories about it.

“Here!” said Myra, laying her silk kimono on the chair, “you can put that on.”

“And you?”

“I have my wrapper, that’s all right for me.”

“Wonderful,” she said, “simply wonderful! Now all I need is warm feet. Then I’ll be absolutely happy.”

She rolled a chair up to the gas-heater and began to untie her shoes.

“Shall I help you?” asked Myra, eager to serve.

“I never heard of such a thing!” said Olga provoked. “Why, I wouldn’t let my maid do such a thing for me!”

“That’s another matter,” said Myra, smiling. “It’s a distinction that one does not confer on maids.”

“You’re certainly insane!” Again that sudden deep crimson pulsed into Olga’s cheeks.

She had drawn off her thin silk stockings and was holding her bare feet toward the flame. She raised her arms and slowly ran Myra’s brush over the hair that fell in heavy black curls about her neck.

Myra jumped on the chair and turned out the gas-light.

“Now,” she said with a laugh, “you can have a painting made of yourself, or a chromo and frame it in gold and hang it on the walls here. Title: Au coin du feu, or The Witch, or Firelight, or something just as good. How can anybody be so shamelessly lovely?”

“Indeed!” said Olga dryly. “Now you’ve done it! We haven’t any matches!”

“In the first place, there’s light enough for me,” said Myra, seating herself on the floor in the ruddy firelight. “And in the second place, we can always light a spill from this. If we can’t find anything better, we’ll use a hundred mark note. We have plenty of them. Child, what a marvellous foot you have! But so cold, they’re always like ice!”

She clasped both hands about Olga’s foot. It was as nobly shaped, as beautiful in line and color as if a masterhand had chiselled it out of marble. But it was as heavy and as cold as stone.

Myra endeavored to warm it in her hands, but then she could not resist temptation—she set her lips upon its cool, smooth, white skin.

Olga broke away, sprang up and ran through the dark room to the window.

“Olga!” cried Myra, terrified, and rose, hesitantly. “What is the matter? What’s wrong with you?”

No answer. Myra went over to her. But when she reached the window and stretched out her hand toward her, Olga dodged as if hunted, along the wall.

She stood, cowering, in a corner, Myra barring her way.

Her lovely pale face gleamed weirdly in the dark. Her tense features were at once frightened and threatening, like a wounded animal’s, that sees itself surrounded and prepares to defend itself desperately.

Myra shrank from the expression of those compressed lips, those darkly glowing eyes. Timidly she laid her hand on Olga’s arms, which were folded across her breast.

Olga started and cowered deeper in her corner.

“Go away!” she said through clenched teeth. “Let me be!”

“You must not stand in your bare feet on the bare floor,” said Myra on the verge of tears. “You’ll catch your death of cold. I don’t want you to do anything but sit by the heater. I can sleep in the hall, in front of the door, or I can take another room, or I can jump out the window. But come out of that corner, I can’t bear to look at you a minute longer!”

She seized her by both shoulders, but Olga shook her off.

“Let me be!” she said angrily. “Can’t you see that you’re torturing me to death? How can anybody be so stupidly cruel?”

Her voice broke and suddenly her face was covered with tears.

Myra could control herself no longer. Her eyes, too, brimmed over.

“I don’t understand!” she said with quivering lips. “If I’m so hateful to you that you can’t stand me, what are you here for? Why do you have anything to do with me? No one can like a person whose presence is a torture to him. But I know why you can’t stand me!”

“Why?” asked Olga astonished.

Myra shook her head in silence, still struggling with her tears.

“Why can’t I stand you?” Olga demanded more urgently. “Answer me! I want to know!”

Myra still avoided looking at her. “Because I love you too much!” she said bitterly and sadly. “It must be dreadful to be loved by someone whom you do not love! Almost disgusting!”

“Idiot!” said Olga and stroked Myra’s hair very tenderly.

“Oh, don’t,” said Myra and disengaged herself from the hand. “There’s no use forcing one’s self.”

Olga let her arms drop heavily.

“One must force one’s self,” she said, breathing softly but with an effort. “If I did not force myself, I would so smother you with caresses that you’d be frightened to death and run away.”

Myra felt the pulse throbbing in her neck so that she could scarcely breathe.

“Don’t do it,” she said. “Though I would certainly never run away, I might go mad with happiness!”

Then Olga slowly raised both her slender white arms and laid them on Myra’s shoulders. Myra felt their powerful, delicious pressure grow tenser and tenser.

Since Olga was barefoot, their faces were almost on a level. Their eyes bored into one another, gravely, unflinchingly, while they felt in every vein the terrible throbbing of their hearts.

Then they bent toward one another, like two thirsting souls, and laid mouth upon mouth.

They did not release one another again. They kissed one another more and more covetously. They walked through the room, nestling close together, they sat on the edge of the bed in one another’s arms. Their clothes slipped off and lay on the floor.

The coarse, damp sheets exhaled a chill miasma. They hardly felt it, so hot was the blood in their youthful bodies.

They pressed upon one another as if they wanted to pass one into the other, to be merged, be one.

Their slender, supple limbs wove one into the other, as the trees of a virgin forest inextricably interpenetrate.

They did not speak. But like a murmuring music, they heard the droning pulse of one another’s hearts, and the breath that came quicker and quicker.

Their bodies seized each other as wild beasts seize and shake the bars of their cages. They buried their nails in one another’s flesh, their teeth in their tensed muscles.

Then they lay nestling one against the other like children tired with play, while their lips brushed eyelids and cheeks as gently, as softly, as a butterfly a swaying flower.

“Little one!” said Olga, and all the bells pealed in her voice. “My beautiful, my good one!”

“My dear,” said Myra. “Oh you miracle of heaven! What are you really? Are you a wild creature? Or a god? Or the spirit of a white orchid?”

“I don’t know,” said Olga. “I believe I am a god. But an hour ago I was a poor tortured creature. Are you not proud, little girl, to be able to work such miracles?”

“I wish I could work miracles,” said Myra longingly.

Olga laughed a hard laugh. “Then you’d change me into a man!” she said.

“God forbid!” cried Myra, clasping her in both arms. “Never! Never! Never! But if I could work miracles, I’d never let this night end. I would make it last forever!”

The red glow of the copper behind the gas flame filled the room with a warm light. The little pointed flames trembled gently, and the bright spot on the worn gay carpet trembled, too.

Olga leaned on her elbows, supporting her head in her hands. Between her white fingers her black curls peeped. In her pale face, her clear dark eyes glowed in infinite majesty and clarity, like twin stars.

“Forever!” she said softly. “Everything that is God, is eternal! Do you not feel that this night belongs to God? Time is an invention of the Devil. Satan invented the passage of time in order to make man apostate to God. But God remains eternal. Satan invented much else, besides, sickness, pain, vermin and money. Above all—money! But time came and the passage of time, and could never be dispelled again. Now they are a part of every invention of the Devil. But what is God’s is eternal. New happiness always effaces old pain as if it had never been. And happiness endures. No pain can efface it. I would die of shame if I thought that only the nerve-endings in our skin vibrate. Don’t you feel that something has happened to your soul that must remain with it beyond all death? Don’t you feel that this hour has changed you beyond any power of death to change?”

“Yes,” said Myra. “And more than any birth. I was born today—not twenty years ago. Now I can say to myself for the first time consciously: ‘I live!’”

“We live!” said Olga, clasping her to her, with an exultation in her voice that was like the jubilant cry of a wild bird rising in flight.

“We live, sweetheart! Forever, and ever, and ever, we live!”