Fear Read Free

experience did not go hand-in-hand with the courage to pay the true price of an adventure, which is danger. When, at this time of a contented serenity that she could not enhance for herself, the young man approached her with ardent and obvious desire, entering her bourgeois world with all the romantic aura of his art around him—while other men merely paid respectful court to her, praising her as a ‘beautiful lady’, and indulged in mild flirtations without really desiring her as a woman—she felt deeply intrigued forthe first time since her girlhood days. Perhaps all that really attracted her to him was a touch of grief lying like a shadow on his rather too interestingly arranged features. She was not to know that in fact it was something he had learnt, like the technical aspects of his art and the sad, thoughtful melancholy with which he would play an impromptu that he had composed in his head well in advance. To Irene, who in the usual way felt that she was entirely surrounded by the complacent bourgeoisie, this melancholy suggested the idea of a more rarefied world, one that she had glimpsed graphically depicted in books and that moved her romantically at the theatre, and she instinctively leant out past the confines of her everyday feelings to observe it. Spellbound, she paid him a compliment on the spur of the moment, perhaps expressing it more warmly than was proper. It made him look up from the keyboard at the speaker, and that first glance reached out to her. She was alarmed, and at the same time felt the pleasures of alarm. A conversation in which everything appeared to be illuminated and stoked by fires only just under the surface occupied her mind, intriguing her already lively curiosity so much that she did not avoid another meeting at a public recital. After that they saw each other quite often, and before long it was not by chance. A few weeks later, the delightful idea that she, who had never before thought highly of hermusical judgement, correctly judging her appreciation of art to be minimal, meant so much to a real artist like him—for he kept assuring her that she was the one who really understood him and could advise him—caused her to agree rather too quickly when he said he would like to play his latest composition to her and her alone. The intentions behind this proposition had perhaps been half-genuine, but they were lost amidst kisses, and it ended with her surprised surrender to him. Her first feeling was one of alarm at this unexpected turn taken by their relationship, moving it into the sensual sphere. The mysterious thrill that had surrounded it was abruptly dispelled, and when her conscience pricked her for committing this unplanned act of adultery, it was only partly assuaged by the tingling sense of vanity in having for the first time defied the bourgeois world in which she lived and as she thought by her own decision. Her horror at her own wickedness, which alarmed her for the first few days, became a source of heightened pride. But these mysterious emotions too were felt at their full strength only at first. Beneath the surface, her instincts resisted this man, and most of all what was new in him, the difference that had in fact aroused her curiosity. The extravagance of his clothing, the gypsy way in which he lived, the irregularity of his financial situation, always swinging between extravagance and embarrassment, were alien to her bourgeois mind.Like most women, she wanted to see an artist as very romantic from a distance, and very well conducted in personal relationships, a fascinating beast of prey, but kept safely behind the iron bars of morality. The passion that intoxicated her in his playing of the piano made her uneasy when they were physically close; she did not really like his sudden, masterful embraces, and instinctively compared their self-willed ruthlessness with the milder ardour of her husband, who was still reticent and respectfully considerate of her even after their