She was totally incapable of appreciating the magnitude of such a choice: it only reached her in the way that a great rain-storm raging without, just leaks in at the interstices of some window sash, and perhaps makes an infinitesimal puddle on the floor. Nothing greater than that, at the moment, had access to her mind: she could only think of all the pleasant social schemes that shone so rosily in her brain half an hour before, and she began to talk rapidly and half hysterically:
“Oh, I can’t believe it!” she said. “There can be no decision of the sort before me. I’ve got such a full week ahead, there are a hundred engagements I must keep, and then there’s Baireuth. Surely I can go to Baireuth, Hermann, can’t I? Our tickets are taken for the first cycle, and you’ve engaged a saloon carriage and ordered my cabin on the boat and everything? Oh, don’t let everything be spoiled for me; I was enjoying myself so much without doing anybody any harm, and only giving them the most lovely parties.
“Then there are all my English friends, and you can’t imagine how many intimate friends I’ve got now among the real people—the people who matter. How can I weigh my sympathies in that cold way? We must wait to see what happens and go on being good friends with everybody. Think who was here to-night! German and English and French, and all so friendly, and all dining with us! Surely if you are right, and there is a war, it cannot last very long. You always said that Germany could walk across France whenever she chose, just as you walk across the Park. It would be very sad, but if it’s got to happen, I suppose it’s got to happen, and the sooner it’s over the better. And if we don’t go to Baireuth, we must have some parties down in the country. But I can’t believe it yet: we were so friendly with Germany, and no one could have been pleasanter than the Princess and the Ambassador were to each other. Kuhlmann, too, he is singing in opera here all this week and the next. What will Helen do about him? Will she have to decide? And your cure: won’t you be able to go to Marienbad?”
He interrupted her violently, for her twopenny interests had weaned his uxoriousness from him again.
“Ah, do not be such a baby,” he said. “Can you think of nothing but your operas and your dinner-parties? The cataclysm is upon us, and the whole world is going into the cannon’s mouth, and yet you say, ‘Let there be a special cool corner for me in the cannon, where I shall not feel the explosion.’ Who cares whether you go to Baireuth or I to Marienbad? Who are we? That is the question——”
She always cried easily when anything affecting her own personal comfort was concerned; if she missed a train her great blue eyes filled with tears, as she thought how unkind it was of the engine-driver to start before she arrived. The prime duty of everybody was to make things nice for her, since she made things nice for so many others.... So now she began to sob, and the great diamond rose and fell in an agitated manner over her heaving bosom.
“You are horrid to me,” she said. “You scold and scream at me when I am absolutely wretched and want to be comforted. All my pleasure is spoiled, and instead of sympathizing with me, you call me a baby. When you squeezed your finger in the door last week, I did not laugh at you: I tore up one of my best handkerchiefs and bound it up for you. I spend my life in slaving for you, and getting people to come here who might be useful to you. And when I am unhappy, this is all you do——”
He looked at her a moment, as she lay back in her chair clad in that wonderful soft silver mail with the gold line running through it, and the paltriness of her desolation faded from his view, leaving only the desolation.
He seated himself on the arm of her chair, and with his thick, capable fingers caressed her arm. They were squat and strong, like the toes of an Arab.
“You are tired, my dearest,” he said; “think no more of these troubles. I did not think you were tired, it did not occur to me, you who are never tired, so your Hermann did not make allowances, and you must forgive him. Go to bed now and get a good night’s rest, and we shall see how things are in the morning. But whatever happens, my Aline, I shall be here to look after you.”