For the first time since I had known her, Frau Zalewski was at a loss what to say.
"Well, in that case—so far as I am concerned," she replied. "Of course it is there in the cards.
A surprise about a gentleman in the house."
"Is it also in the cards that we are going out this evening?" I asked.
Pat laughed.
"We hadn't got that far, Robby.
We had just arrived at you."
Frau Zalewski rose and swept up the cards.
"You can believe in it, and you cannot believe in it, and you can believe in it mistakenly, like Zalewski.
With him the nine of spades always stood as an evil omen above the watery element.
He took it to mean he must beware of water.
But it was schnapps and Pilsner."
"Pat," said I when she had gone, and I took her in my arms, "it is wonderful to come home and find you here. It is a constant new surprise to me.
When I come up the last flight and open the door, I always have palpitations lest it may not be true."
She looked at me smiling.
She almost never answered when I said that sort of thing.
I couldn't have imagined it, and could hardly have suffered it anyway if she had said anything like it—it seemed to me a woman ought not to tell a man that she loves him.
Pat's eyes became only radiant and happy, and thereby she said more than many words.
I held her tight a long time, I felt the warmth, of her skin and the faint fragrance of her hair—I held her tight and there was nothing there but her; the darkness fell away, she lived, she breathed, and nothing was lost.
"Are we really going out, Robby?" she asked, near to my face.
"All of us together," I replied. "Koster and Lenz too.
Karl is at the door now."
"And Billy?"
"Billy comes, of course.
What should we do with what is left of the supper otherwise?
Or have you eaten already?"
"No, not yet.
I've been waiting for you."
"But you shouldn't wait for me.
Never.
It's terrible waiting for someone."
She shook her head.
"You don't understand, Robby.
It's only terrible to have nothing to wait for."
She switched on the light over the looking-glass.
"But now I must start to dress, or I shall never be ready.
Are you dressing too?"
"Later," said I. "I'll soon be done.
Let me stay here awhile."
I called the dog to me and sat in the armchair by the window.
I liked to sit quietly and watch Pat while she dressed.
I was never more aware of mystery, of the eternal strangeness of woman than in watching this light hither-and-thithering before the looking-glass, this contemplative appraisal, this complete absorption in herself, this slipping back into the unconscious sagacity of sex.
I could not imagine a woman talking and laughing when she dressed— and if she did, must lack the mystery and inexplicable charm of the ever illusive.
I loved Pat's graceful and yet lithe movements before the mirror, it was marvellous to watch how she reached to her hair, or deftly and cautiously . applied an eyebrow pencil to her forehead.
She had something then about her of a deer and of a slim panther, and something too of an Amazon before the battle.
She forgot everything around her, her face was grave and concentrated, quietly and attentively she held it up to its reflection in the looking-glass, and, as she leaned close toward it, it seemed no longer to be a reflection, but as if two women were there eyeing one another with age-old, knowing look —bold and appraising, out of the twilight of reality and the centuries.
The fresh breath of evening came in through the open window.
I sat quietly there, I had forgotten nothing of the afternoon, I knew it all quite well—but as I looked across at Pat I felt the sombre grief, that had sunk down in me like a stone, begin to be lapped about by a wild hope, change and in some strange way mingle with hope; the one became the other; the grief, the hope, the wind, the evening, and the beautiful girl between the shining mirror and the lights; yes, for a moment I had a strange intuition that just this, and in a real and profound sense, is life: and perhaps happiness even—love with a mixture of sadness, reverence, and silent knowledge.
Chapter XIX
I was standing at the cab stand waiting.