Oh, in that great, gentle happiness she had been able to forget everything, she had not felt the past within her! But she now felt that the past always remained, irrevocably and indelibly. She had been his wife and she held him still in her blood. She felt it now with every breath that she drew. She was indignant because he dared to whisper about the old days, in her ear; but it had all been as he said, irrevocably, indelibly.
“Rudolph!” she entreated, clasping her hands together. “Spare me!”
She almost screamed it, in a cry of fear and despair. But he laughed and with one hand seized both hers, clasped in entreaty:
“If you go on like that, if you look at me so beseechingly with those beautiful eyes, I won’t spare you even here and I’ll kiss you until ...”
His words swept over her like a scorching wind. But laughing voices approached; and two girls and two young men, dressed up, for the pavane, as Henri IV. and Marguerite de Valois, came running down the stairs:
“What’s become of the others?” they cried, looking round in the staircase.
And they came dancing up to Cornélie. The ballet-master also approached. She did not understand what he said:
“Where are the others?” she repeated, mechanically, in a hoarse voice.
“Here they come.... Now we’re all there....”
They were all talking and laughing and glittering and buzzing about her. She summoned up all her poor strength and issued a few instructions. The guests streamed into the great ball-room, sat down in the front chairs, crowded together in the corners. The pavane was danced in the middle of the room, to an old trailing melody: a long, winding curve of graceful steps, deep bows and satin gleaming with sudden lustre like that of porcelain ... with the occasional flutter of a cape ... and a flash of light on a rapier....