Rochefort removed his coat and sword-belt, got under the rug, rested his head on the pillow and in five minutes was snoring.
Javotte, crossing the landing, entered her mistress’s bedroom, where a lamp was burning.
She turned the lamp full on and sat down in a chair by the fire-place. She was in love and her love was hopeless, and her power of love may be gauged from the fact that she was thinking less of herself than of Rochefort, and less of Rochefort than his position.
She knew Camille Fontrailles as only a woman can know a woman. That beautiful face, those eyes so capable of betraying interest and love, that charm, that grace—all these had no influence with Javotte. She guessed Camille to be heartless, not cruel, but acardiac, if one may use the expression, without impulse, negative towards men, yet exacting towards them, requiring their homage, yet giving in return no pay—or only promissory notes; capable of real friendship towards women, and more than friendship—absolute devotion to a chosen woman friend. This type of woman is exceedingly common in all high civilizations; it is the stand of the ego against the Race instinct, a refusal of the animal by the sensibilities, a development of the finer feelings at the expense of the natural passions—who knows—— Javotte reasoned only by instinct, and it was instinct that made her guess Rochefort’s passion for Camille to be a hopeless passion, and it was this guess that now brought some trace of comfort to her human and wicked heart.
She was capable of dying for Rochefort, of sacrificing all comfort in life for his comfort, yet of treasuring the thought of his discomfiture at the hands of Camille.
She rose up, and, taking the lamp, stood before the mirror that had so often reflected the beauty of her mistress.
What she saw was charming, yet she saw it through the magic of disenchantment.
It was the wild flower gazing at her reflection in the brook where the lordly dragon-fly pauses for a second, heedless of her, on his way towards the garden of the roses.
Then she placed the lamp on the table again, and went downstairs to make coffee for the dragon-fly, to give him strength on his journey.