“It seems all very dreadful!” she murmured, tremblingly. “And I think, dear Diana, you should say something of this to Féodor. For I am afraid he is making you suffer, and that you are unhappy.”
“No,—that is not so,” and Diana smiled reassuringly. “I do not suffer—I have forgotten what suffering is like! And I am not unhappy, because what is called ‘happiness’ has no special meaning for me. I exist—that is all! I am conscious of the principal things of existence—air, light, movement—these keep me living without any real effort or desire on my own part to live!”
She spoke in a dreamy way, with a far-off look in her eyes,—then, perceiving that Madame Dimitrius looked nervously distressed, she brought herself back from her dreamland as it were with an effort, and went on:
“You must not worry about me in the least, dear Madame! After all, it may be an excellent thing for me that I appear to have done with emotions! One has only to think how people constantly distress themselves for nothing! People who imagine themselves in love, for instance!—how they torment themselves night and day!—if they fail to get letters from each other!—if they quarrel!—if they think themselves neglected!—why, it is a perpetual turbulence! Then the parents who spend all their time looking after their children!—and the children grow up and go their own way,—they grow from pretty little angels into great awkward men and women, and it is as if one had played with charming dolls, and then saw them suddenly changed into clothes-props! Well, I am free from all these tiresome trivialities—I have what I think the gods must have,—Indifference!”
Madame Dimitrius sighed.
“Ah, Diana, it is a pity you were never made a happy wife and mother!” she said, softly.
“I thought so too,—once!” and Diana laughed carelessly—“But I’m sure I’m much better off as I am! Now, dear, we’ll part for the present. I want to rest a little—and to say my prayers—before Dr. Féodor sends for me.”
Madame at once rose to leave the room. But, before doing so, she took Diana in her arms and kissed her tenderly.
“God bless and guard thee, dear child!” she murmured. “Thou art brave and loyal, and I have grown to love thee! If Féodor should bring thee to harm, he is no son of mine!”
For a moment the solitary-hearted, unloved woman felt a thrill of pleasure in this simple expression of affection,—the real sensation of youth filled her veins, as if she were a confiding girl with her mother’s arms about her, and something like tears sprang to her eyes. But she suppressed the emotion quickly. Smiling and apparently unmoved, she let the gentle old lady go from her, and watched her to the last as she moved with the careful step of age along the entresol and out through the entrance to the head of the staircase, where she disappeared. Once alone, Diana stood for a few moments lost in thought. She knew instinctively that her life was at stake,—Dimitrius had reached the final test of his mysterious dealings with the innermost secrets of Nature, and he had passed the “problem of the Fourth, Sixth and Seventh,” which according to his theories, meant certain refractions and comminglings of light. Now he had arrived at “the ultimate culmination of the Eighth,” or, as he described it “the close or the rebound of the Octave,”—and in this “rebound” or “culmination” his subject, Diana, was to take part as a mote within a sun-ray. She did not disguise from herself the danger in which she stood,—but she had thought out every argument for and against the ordeal which she had voluntarily accepted. She measured the value of her life from each standpoint and found it nil, except in so far as her love for natural beauty was concerned. She would be sorry, she said inwardly, to leave the trees, the flowers, the birds, the beautiful things of sky and sea, but she would not be sorry at all to see the last of human beings! With all her indifference, which even to her own consciousness, enshrined her as within barriers of ice, her memory was keen,—she looked back to the few months of distance and time which separated her from the old life of the dutiful daughter to inconsiderate and selfish parents—and beyond that, she went still further and saw herself as a young girl full of hope and joy, given up heart and soul to the illusion of love, from which she was torn by the rough hand of the very man to whom she had consecrated her every thought. In all this there was nothing enviable or regrettable that she should now be sorry or afraid to die—and in her life to come—if she lived—what would there be? Her eyes turned almost without her own consent towards the mirror—and there she read the answer. She would possess the power to rule and sway the hearts of all men,—if she cared! But now it had so happened that she did not care. Smouldering in her soul like the last spent ashes of a once fierce fire, there was just one passion left—the strong desire of vengeance on all the forces that had spoilt and embittered her natural woman’s life. She was no longer capable of loving, but she knew she could hate! A woman seldom loves deeply and truly more than once in her life—she stakes her all on the one chance and hope of happiness, and the man who takes advantage of that love and ruthlessly betrays it may well beware. His every moment of existence is fraught with danger, for there is no destructive power more active and intense than love transformed to hate through falsehood and injustice. And Diana admitted to herself, albeit reluctantly, that she could hate deeply and purposefully. She hated herself for the fact that it was so,—but she was too honest not to acknowledge it. Her spirit had been wounded and maltreated by all on whom she had set her affections,—and as her way of life had been innocent and harmless, she resented the unfairness of her fate. Wrong or right, she longed to retaliate in some way on the petty slights, the meannesses, the hypocrisies and neglect of those who had assisted in spoiling her youth and misjudging her character, and though she was willing to “love her enemies” in a broad and general sense, she was not ready to condone the easy callousness and cruelty of the persons and circumstances which had robbed her of the natural satisfaction and peace of happy womanhood.