Erik Dorn Part 35

"Matty, I regret sadly that you are not a prost.i.tute."

Startling!

"It would save me the trouble of having to fall in love with you, dear child."

She smiled, a sudden amus.e.m.e.nt in her eyes.

"You too, Mr. Dorn. I had thought different of you."

"As a creature beyond the petty agitations, eh?"

"As a man."

"It is possible for a Man, despite a capital M, to love."

"Yes, love. It is possible for him only to love. And you do not."

"Much worse. I am sad."

"Why?"

"Perhaps because it is the only emotion that comes without effort."

"So you would fall in love with me to forget that I bore you."

"A broader ambition than that. To forget that living bores me, Mathilde."

"There is someone else you love, Mr. Dorn."

"There was." He smiled humorlessly. "Do you mind if I talk of love? I need a conversational antidote."

"And if you talk of love you may be spared the trouble of having to make love," she laughed quietly. "But I would rather talk of von Stinnes. I am worried."

"You are young," Dorn interrupted, "and full of political error. I am beginning to believe von Stinnes. The most terrible result of the war has been the political mania it has given to women."

Mathilde settled back on the divan and stared with mocking pensiveness at her shoes. Dorn, speaking as if he desired to smile, continued:

"Do you know that when one has loved a woman one grows sad after it is ended, remembering not the woman, but one's self? The memory of her becomes a mirror that gives you back the image of something that has died--a shadow of youth and joy that still bears your name. It is the same with old songs, old perfumes. All mirrors. So I walk through life now smiling into mirrors that give back not myself, but someone else--another Dorn."

He arose and looked down at her.

"Does that interest you?"

"I understand you."

"There are many ways of making love. Sorrowful phrases are the most entertaining, perhaps."

"You make me think you have loved too much."

"Yes, it would be difficult to kiss you. I would become sad with memory of other kisses. Because you are young--as I was then."

"Was it long ago?"

"Things that end are always long ago."

"Then it was only yesterday."

"Yes, yesterday," he laughed, pleased with the ironic sound of his voice. "And what is longer ago than yesterday?"

She had risen and stood before him, an almost boyish figure with her fists clenched.

"I have something else I am in love with," she whispered. "I am in love with----"

"The wonderful revolution, I know."

"Yes."

"And some day in the future you, too, will look into a mirror and see not yourself but a glowing-faced girl that was in love with what was once called the revolution."

"But if things end it is only because we are too weak to hold them forever. So while we are strong we must hold them twice as eagerly."

"Sad. All most deplorably sad, Mathilde. Hands shuffle us into new combinations, when we would prefer the old. Thus you, too, will some day listen to the cry that rises from all endings."

"You are designing. You wish to make me sad, Mr. Dorn. And succeed."

"Only that I may contemplate the futility of your love and smile. As I cannot quite smile at my own. We do not smile easily at corpses."

His hands covered her fingers gently.

"I will give myself to you, if you wish," she whispered.

"And I prefer you like this," he smiled. "If you will come close to me and lay your head against me." He looked down at her as she obeyed.

"There is an odor to your hair. And your cheek is soft. These things are similar things. You are almost like a phantom."

"Of her."

"No. She is forgotten. It's something else. A phantom of something that once lived in me, and died. It comes back and stares at me sometimes out of the eyes of strange women, out of the sounds of music. Now, out of your hair."

"And you do not want me, Erik?"

"I want you. But I prefer to amuse myself by fancying that you are unattainable."

"I've liked you, Erik. The rest does not matter to me. I grew old during the war, and careless. My father and two brothers died. And another man."

"So we both need diversion."

"Yes."