I was, as it were, a cat playing with a mouse, only I was both cat and mouse.
One day I would picture our meeting—Antony's and mine. The next I would push him away from my thoughts, and decide that I would not even let him come to me until the year was up. Then, again, when it grew evening, and the darkness gradually crept up, there came a scent in the air which affected me so that I longed to see him at once—to see him—to let him kiss me. Oh, to myself I hardly dared to think of this!
The kisses of Augustus were, as yet, the only ones I knew.
At last I wrote my answers.
To the Duke I said my plans were uncertain. I did not know when I should return to England; probably not at all until next year, as I thought of going to Egypt for the winter. I finished with some pleasant platitudes.
Antony's answer took longer to write, and was only a few words when finished.
"I am staying at Versailles," I wrote. "If you like to come and see me casually—to talk about the ancestors—you may; but not for a week."
Why I made this stipulation of a week I do not know. Directly I had posted the letter I felt the time could never pass. It was with the greatest difficulty I prevented myself from sending a telegram of three words: "Come now. To-day." How would he find me looking? Would he, too, think I had improved in appearance? I had grown an inch, it seemed to me. I was never very short, but now, at five feet seven, he could not call me "little Comtesse" any more. Oh, to hear his dear voice! To look into his greeny-blue, beautiful eyes! Oh, I fear no advice in the world of a hundred marquises could keep me from Antony much longer!
Would Wednesday never come? The Wednesday in August after the
Coronation, that was the day I had fixed for our meeting.
Should I be out, and leave a message for him to follow me into the gardens, or should I quietly stay in my sitting-room? What should we say to each other? I must be very calm, of course, and appear perfectly indifferent, and we must not speak upon any subjects but the pictures here, and our mutual friends, and the pleasure of Paris, and the health of the dogs.