Victor smothered an exclamation of annoyance.
Unbidden, a word shaped in Sofia’s consciousness, a French monosyllable into which the war had packed every shade and gradation of hatred and contempt, the epithet Boche.
Immediately erasing every sign of irritation, Victor greeted the man with casual suavity. “Oh, there you are, eh, Sturm?” Then, as Sofia and Mrs. Waring turned to go, he added quickly: “A moment, please. Since Mr. Sturm to-day becomes a member of the household, acting as my assistant in some research work which I am undertaking, I may as well present him now. Mrs. Waring, permit me: Mr. Sturm. And the Princess Sofia Vassilyevski, my daughter ...”
Mumbling their names after Victor, the man Sturm executed two more bows. At the same time he seemed to remind himself that his soldierly carriage was perhaps injudicious, and forthwith abandoned it for a studied slouch which, in Sofia’s sight, was little less than insolent. And unmistakably there was something nearly resembling insolence in the eyes that boldly sought hers: a look equivocal at best and, intentionally or no, wholly offensive in essence; as if the fellow were asserting their partnership in some secret understanding; or as if he knew something by no means to Sofia’s credit....
Her acknowledgment of his salute was accordingly cool, and she was glad when a nod from Prince Victor gave her leave to go.
X
VICTOR ET AL
Those first few weeks of emancipation from the ennui of existence at the Café des Exiles were so replete with wonders that Sofia lived largely in a beatific state of breathless excitement, devoting the best part of her days to thoughtless flying from delight to new delight, and going nightly to her bed so healthily tired that she slept like a top and never once awakened to memories of disturbing dreams.
Perhaps her pleasure burned the brighter for its dark, ambiguous background—those many questions which Prince Victor persisted in leaving unanswered. Sofia knew bad times of perplexity and depression, when the price of translation from drudge to princess seemed a sore price to pay.
And yet, required to state the cost to her in terms explicit, she must have hesitated lest she appear ungrateful in complaining, who hardly needed to express a wish to have it granted, who indeed knew many a wish realized in fact before she was fully aware of its inception in her private thoughts.
All those lovely material things of life which her famished girlhood had ached for so hopelessly now were hers in abundant measure, and all the less tangible things, too, so requisite to the happiness of women in a worldly world—or nearly all. Frocks she had, with furs and furbelows no end; flowers and flattery and frivolities; freedom within limitations as yet not irksome; jewels that would have graced an imperial diadem—everything but the single essential without which everything is hollow nothing and life itself only the dreaming of a dream.