She paused—her eyes were dark with thought and full of a dreamy sorrow,—then, smiling gently, she held out her hand.
“I talk too much, you will say—women always do! Come and see me if you feel disposed—not otherwise; I will send you my card through Lady Melthorpe—meantime, good-night!”
El-Râmi took her hand, and, as he pressed it in his own, felt again that curious thrill which had before communicated itself to his nerves through the same contact.
“Surely you must be a visionary, Madame!” he said, abruptly and with a vague sense of surprise—“and you see things not at all of this world!”
Her faint roseate colour deepened, giving singular beauty to her face.
“What a tell-tale hand mine is!” she replied, withdrawing it slowly from his clasp. “Yes—you are right,—if I could not see things higher than this world, I could not endure my existence for an hour. It is because I feel the future so close about me that I have courage for, and indifference to, the present.”
With that, she left them, and both El-Râmi and Féraz followed her graceful movements with interested eyes, as she glided through the rooms in her snowy trailing robes, with the frosty flash of diamonds in her hair, till she had altogether disappeared; then the languid voice of Lady Melthorpe addressed them.
“Isn’t she an odd creature, that Irene Vassilius? So quaint and peculiar in her ideas! People detest her, you know—she is so dreadfully clever!”
“There could not be a better reason for hatred!” said El-Râmi.
“You see, she says such unpleasant things,” went on Lady Melthorpe, complacently fanning herself,—“she has such decided opinions, and will not accommodate herself to people’s ways. I must confess I always find her de trop myself.”