“Yes, yes, we know what you call doing nothing, you brave little thing! Giving your life to other people, isn’t it?”
But Aline was no longer listening. She was smiling affectionately to some one straight in front of her; and Felicia, turning round to see who it was, perceived Paul de Gery replying to the shy and tender greeting of Mlle. Joyeuse.
“You know each other, then?”
“Do I know M. Paul! I should think so, indeed. We talk of you very often. He has never told you, then?”
“Never. He must be a terribly sly fellow.”
She stopped short, her mind enlightened by a flash; and quickly without heed to de Gery, who was coming up to congratulate her on her triumph, she leaned over towards Aline and spoke to her in a low voice. That young lady blushed, protested with smiles and words under her breath: “How can you think of such a thing? At my age—a ‘grandmamma’!” and finally seized her father’s arm in order to escape some friendly teasing.
When Felicia saw the two young people going off together, when she had realized the fact, which they had not yet grasped themselves, that they were in love with each other, she felt as it were a crumbling all around her. Then upon her dream, now fallen to the ground in a thousand fragments, she set herself to stamp furiously. After all, he was quite right to prefer this little Aline to herself. Would an honest man ever dare to marry Mlle. Ruys? She, a home, a family—what nonsense! A harlot’s daughter you are, my dear; you must be a harlot too if you want to become anything at all.
The day wore on. The crowd, more active now that there were empty spaces here and there, commenced to stream towards the door of exit after great eddyings round the successes of the year, satisfied, rather tired, but excited still by that air charged with the electricity of art. A great flood of sunlight, such as sometimes occurs at four o’clock in the afternoon, fell on the stained-glass rose-window, threw on the sand tracks of rainbow-coloured lights, softly bathing the bronze or the marble of the statues, imparting an iridescent hue to the nudity of a beautiful figure, giving to the vast museum something of the luminous life of a garden. Felicia, absorbed in her deep and sad reverie, did not notice the man who advanced towards her, superb, elegant, fascinating, through the respectfully opened ranks of the public, while the name of “Mora” was everywhere whispered.
“Well, mademoiselle, you have made a splendid success. I only regret one thing about it, and that is the cruel symbol which you have hidden in your masterpiece.”
As she saw the duke before her, she shuddered.