This has always seemed to me a strange little scene between us three. The accepted conventions of emotion required that it should raise in me and in her a feeling of remorse; for Max was so honest, so simple, so exclusively given over to gratitude. So far as I recollect, however, I had no such feeling, and I do not think that the Countess differed from me in this respect. I was envious of him, not because he took her with him (for he did not take her love), but simply because he had got something he liked, was very pleased, and in a good temper with the world and himself. The dream of his life, as he declared impetuously, was fulfilled. The dream of ours was shattered. How were we to reproach ourselves on his account? It would have been the Quixotry of conscience.
"I daresay you won't like it so much as you think," said I, with a childish desire to make him a little less comfortable.
"Oh, yes, I shall! And you'll like it, won't you?" He turned to his wife affectionately.
"As if I should let you take it if I didn't like it," she answered, smiling. "Think how I shall show off before all my good countrywomen in Paris!"
"I don't know how to thank your Majesty," said Max.
"I don't want any thanks. I haven't done it for thanks. I thought you the best man."
"No, no," he murmured. "I like to think it's partly friendship for my wife and me. Everybody will say so."
I looked up with a little start.
"I suppose they will," said I.
"Yes, you'll be handsomely abused."