Of the last series of subtleties, Gerald was not capable. He could not
touch the quick of her. But where his ruder blows could not penetrate,
the fine, insinuating blade of Loerke's insect-like comprehension
could. At least, it was time for her now to pass over to the other, the
creature, the final craftsman. She knew that Loerke, in his innermost
soul, was detached from everything, for him there was neither heaven
nor earth nor hell. He admitted no allegiance, he gave no adherence
anywhere. He was single and, by abstraction from the rest, absolute in
himself.
Whereas in Gerald's soul there still lingered some attachment to the
rest, to the whole. And this was his limitation. He was limited, BORNE,
subject to his necessity, in the last issue, for goodness, for
righteousness, for oneness with the ultimate purpose. That the ultimate
purpose might be the perfect and subtle experience of the process of
death, the will being kept unimpaired, that was not allowed in him. And
this was his limitation.
There was a hovering triumph in Loerke, since Gudrun had denied her
marriage with Gerald. The artist seemed to hover like a creature on the
wing, waiting to settle. He did not approach Gudrun violently, he was
never ill-timed. But carried on by a sure instinct in the complete
darkness of his soul, he corresponded mystically with her,
imperceptibly, but palpably.
For two days, he talked to her, continued the discussions of art, of
life, in which they both found such pleasure. They praised the by-gone
things, they took a sentimental, childish delight in the achieved
perfections of the past. Particularly they liked the late eighteenth
century, the period of Goethe and of Shelley, and Mozart.
They played with the past, and with the great figures of the past, a
sort of little game of chess, or marionettes, all to please themselves.
They had all the great men for their marionettes, and they two were the
God of the show, working it all. As for the future, that they never
mentioned except one laughed out some mocking dream of the destruction
of the world by a ridiculous catastrophe of man's invention: a man
invented such a perfect explosive that it blew the earth in two, and
the two halves set off in different directions through space, to the
dismay of the inhabitants: or else the people of the world divided into
two halves, and each half decided IT was perfect and right, the other
half was wrong and must be destroyed; so another end of the world. Or
else, Loerke's dream of fear, the world went cold, and snow fell
everywhere, and only white creatures, polar-bears, white foxes, and men
like awful white snow-birds, persisted in ice cruelty.