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PARTISAN REVIEW
indefinable then tore loose in her, threatening to fly off with her
spirit. It came out of a secret recess in her being that had to be very
carefully kept shut. He did not know what made him feel this or what
it was, but it tortured him with an unutterable fear and the urge
to do something decisive against it, which he could not do, for no–
body but himself noticed anything of it.
While looking through the window watching Clarisse come
back, he knew half-consciously that once again he would be unable
to resist the need to speak badly of Ulrich. Ulrich had returned at
a wrong time. He had a harmful effect on Clarisse. He ruthlessly
tampered with the very thing in her that Walter dared not touch–
the cavern of disaster, all that was poor, sick, all there was of
ill–
omened genius in Clarisse, the secret empty room where something
tore at chains that might some day rend apart.
Now she stood bare-headed before him, as she had just come
in, her sun-hat in her hand, and he looked at her. Her eyes were
mocking, clear, fond- perhaps a little too clear. Sometimes he had
the feeling that she simply possessed a strength that he lacked. Even
when she was a child he had felt her to be a thorn that would not
let him rest, and obviously he himself had never wanted her to be
different. This was perhaps the secret of his life, which the two
others did not understand.
"How deep our sufferings are!" he thought. "I think
it
can't
often happen that two people love each other as deeply as we must
do." And without transition he began to speak.
"I don't want to know what Ulo had been saying to you, but
I can tell you that his strength, which you so much admire, is noth–
ing but a vacuum!"
Clarisse looked at the piano and smiled. Involuntarily he had
sat down again beside the open instrument.
"It must be easy to have heroic feelings," he went on, "if one
is insensitive by nature, and to think in miles if one has no idea of
the abundance that may be hidden in every millimeter!"
They sometimes spoke of him as Ub-as they had called him
in their younger days- and for this he was especially fond of them
in rather the same way as one preserves a smiling deference for one's
nanny.
"He has come to a standstill," Walter added. "You don't notice
it. But you needn't think that I don't know him!"
