XVI
Doubtless that evening I was beautiful. During the supper party at the Grand Hotel I felt that I diffused around me an atmosphere of more subtle intoxication than the music or the wines. Placed between Vassili and Stahl I laughed and laughed in a fever of rapturous gaiety. I was excited and overwrought.
Bozevsky sat facing me. As I glanced at his proud, passionate face, I said in my heart: “To-morrow you will see him no more. But this evening he is here; you see him, pale for the love of you, thrilled by your presence. Do not think of to-morrow. To-morrow is far away!”
So I laughed and laughed while the rhythmic charm of waltzes played on muted strings wrought upon my senses, swaying me towards an unreal world, a world of transcendent passion and incomparable joys.
Stahl, seated at my right hand, was flushed and elated, but still drew the hurried sibilant breaths I had so often noticed in him. Vassili seemed to have fallen in love with me anew. He murmured rapturous words into my ear. “To-morrow you shall be mine, mine only, out of reach of all others, beyond the sight and the desire of all these people—whose necks I should like to wring.” And he drank his Clicquot looking at me with kindling eyes.
“Vassili,” I whispered imploringly, “do not drink any more.”
“Don't you wish me to?” he asked, turning to me with his glass of champagne in his hand. “Don't you wish it? Well—there!” He flung the glass full of blonde wine behind him over his shoulder. The thin crystal chalice was shattered into a thousand pieces.
“What are you doing, Vassili? What are you doing?” cried Grigorievsky. “Are you playing the King of Thule?”
“Precisely,” laughed Vassili. “Was he not the paragon of all lovers, who chose to die of thirst in order to follow his adored one to the grave?”
And somewhat uncertainly he quoted: