"For some time? Then you give her up?"
"Later, much later, I give her up ... when I have ceased to love her."
"What ingenuousness!" exclaimed the Prince of Campobello, astonished.
"Infantile, infantile! I have no spirit in these love affairs," said Lucio Sabini, with a sneer; "but I wish you every success there! You shall tell me about it afterwards when we meet."
"All you want to know. A pity you won't come."
They took leave of each other at the door. Coming down the corridor someone was advancing towards Lucio. He stopped beside him, while the Prince of Campobello, after a slight, sarcastic smile, which the new-comer did not see, withdrew with the elastic step of a good fencer and dancer. With a rearward movement at the threshold of his room, Lucio Sabini tried to escape the meeting and conversation with Serge de Illyne; but he did not succeed. Serge, bending his tall stature and his beautiful face, said to him in the purest French, in a musical voice:
"Allow me; I should like to say a few words."
Lucio, with bad grace, was forced to stand aside and let him pass. Serge de Illyne remained standing because the other did not ask him to sit down. He was a tall young man, of almost statuesque figure, in modern attire. He was already in evening dress, with a stupendous orchid in the buttonhole and a peculiar waistcoat of pale green velvet, with oxidised silver buttons. Serge was of rare masculine beauty, with a very white complexion, large, dark eyes loaded with melting sweetness, a florid mouth beneath the soft, light chestnut moustaches, and a round, white neck. His perfectly shaped, pink hands were loaded with quaint rings, of antique shape, with gems of strange colours, and beneath his shirt-cuff a gold bracelet fell over his wrist, in the fashion of a snake with carbuncle eyes.
"Why, dear Count Sabini," asked the Russian, in his sing-song voice, "do you smoke those bad cigarettes? Let me send you some of my exquisite ones!"
"Thank you!" said Sabini a little curtly, "but I am used to my own."