For a moment Lyda sat still, her eyes cast down, as if she sought for words which eluded her. Then she began in a low voice that was slightly monotonous, as though she spoke out of an old dream. She paused sometimes; but Manners remained silent, asking no questions. He felt that she would prefer this.
She took him back with her to Petrograd (St. Petersburg then) when she was sixteen, ten years before. She was dancing in a second-rate café, and attracted attention, so that the place became popular. A man named Konrad Markoff was the real owner, though he posed as an amateur patron. By his advice, the manager got Lyda to sign a hard and fast contract to dance at the same salary for the next five years. Markoff pretended a fatherly kindness for her; and she was invited occasionally to visit his wife, a Frenchwoman who had lived for years in England.
One night Markoff brought a good-looking English boy of nineteen or so to the café. This boy applauded Lyda's dancing, and was introduced to her at his own request: The Duke of Claremanagh. From the first he was enthusiastic about her talent: not in love ("oh, not at all in love!" Lyda insisted), but anxious to "help a budding genius." At the end of a week he had thought out a practical plan. He would pay for the dancing lessons of which she had dreamed, as of an impossible Paradise: lessons from the great Sophia Verasova. It would cost a lot, yes, but he'd just had a few unexpected thousands left to him by an aunt. If Lyda wouldn't accept, they were sure to be spent on some foolery. She did accept. Perhaps she might have accepted even if Claremanagh hadn't made it quite clear how impersonal, how disinterested were his motives!
Never—the dancer confessed—had she met a "good man" in those days. She would have made an idol of this handsome boy; but he didn't want her idolatry. He was fancying himself in love with the wife of a Don at Oxford just then!
To free her from slavery at the café, Claremanagh paid a big indemnity; and at the time Lyda was grateful to Markoff for arranging the business, not then aware that he was the power behind the throne. It was nearly two years later when the truth was sprung upon the girl, just as she expected to go with Verasova to make her début in Paris. Markoff had wished her to be educated and become a great dancer without expense to himself. There were several ways in which she could be valuable, and unless she promised her services to him, he would prevent her from leaving Petrograd.
Claremanagh had been too carelessly trustful to have the release from her contract framed in a legal document, and Lyda could still be compelled to carry it out. Unless she agreed to use the charm she had, the fame she might win, in the secret service of Russia, she would be thus compelled!
Lyda was not old enough to understand the hideousness of this bargain. She wasn't yet eighteen; and not to go with Verasova would have seemed worse than death. It was only later, when she had soared to brilliant success, that she realized fully what she was expected to do. Engagements were offered to her in the capitals of different countries: after Paris, Rome, and then London. She met many men of distinction, sailors, soldiers, diplomats, financiers. She was to flirt with these men—just how seriously, was her own affair!—and get them inadvertently to tell her things useful to the Tsar's government.
Well, she had flirted! But she had sickened at the business behind the flirtations. Very little information reached Russia through Lyda Pavoya! Reproaches and threats came to her from Markoff; and as a warning of what he could do to bring about her ruin if he chose, Russians in England, France, Italy, America, set the ball of scandal rolling against her. According to them she was a professional siren, a mercenary blood-sucker, a "tigress woman," a devourer of men's happiness and honour! Against such a campaign a woman, placed as she was, found herself helpless. She could only shrug her shoulders, go her own way, and try not to care!
But the war, like an ill wind that blows good to some, changed the world for Lyda. She worked heart and soul in Paris for the Red Cross. The Russian Revolution broke like a red sunrise and with the end of Tsardom she hoped that Markoff's power over her would end also. For some months she had no word from him. Then he appeared in Paris—at a bad moment for her.
Claremanagh had been there on leave. He had come to her house, complaining that he felt ill. At luncheon he had fallen from his chair in a dead faint. The doctor had pronounced the attack a virulent case of influenza. Claremanagh couldn't be moved. Lyda, helped by Madame Lemercier, had nursed him. He thought she had saved his life—vowed that he owed her more than she had ever owed him. There was endless gossip, of course, but Lyda had been so glad to repay her debt of gratitude that she hadn't much cared.