“Once she had come to this conclusion—and it was the strong child of her wish—her impatience to execute it was almost uncontrollable. They say in the theatre that never was a stranger thing seen than the varying tempers she displayed during the course of that long rehearsal. Now seeming to forget her part, now acting like a little fury, there were moments when she rose to such supreme heights of talent that the hearts of those listening were almost stilled in their beating; other moments when the conductor threw down his bâton, and the musicians of the band tittered audibly.
“‘Good God, mademoiselle,’ the director said, ‘are you ill—are you forgetting—do you not know that the opera is played to-night? Donnerwetter, they will hiss you off the stage if you sing like that!—they will.—Thousand devils! cannot you strike the key?’
“Sharply rebuked thus, she would remember herself, and play as only Christine of Zlarin could play. Then the conductor would beam upon her again.
“‘Equal that,’ he would say, ‘and you shall have all Vienna at your feet. Take courage, mademoiselle; fear nothing; you have the gift which conquers. When you come upon the stage to-night, do not think of yourself at all. Think only of your victory. Say to yourself: “I am alone, and I will triumph.” Do you know what success is? Himmel, it is to be in all the newspapers, to be the angel of the critics, my dear. That should be the dream of your life. When you take your violin in your hand to-night you will say: “To-morrow I shall be in the newspapers—that is fame—that is the end of all my work.”’
“Christine heard him and yet did not hear. She was saying to herself: ‘I shall see my lover in an hour; in an hour I shall touch his hands.’ She was wondering how he would greet her—whether he would take her into his arms as he used to do, or stop to chide her because she had left him. When at last the weary prova came to an end, and she found herself out in the Opernring, she was quivering with excitement. The warning word she meant to speak was almost forgotten as she drove rapidly towards the Hôtel Métropole. There, the paper said, the Count would stay while he was in Vienna. There she would seek him and confess: ‘I have come to you because my husband has promised this and that. Beware of him—he will kill you.’
“It was full dark when she arrived at the hotel, and the great hall hummed with life. There had been at the Palace a levée for the officers in the Bosnian service, and many of these now clattered up and down the stairs, or chatted over the tables, or served tea to pretty women. A group of Americans standing in the porch were discussing all things nasally; and one of their number, recognising Christine, pointed her out to his fellows. Many a head turned when at length she entered the hall and waited while a page ran up to the Count’s room. In all Vienna there was no face more fair, no figure more supple and sinuous, no eyes more eloquent, than those of the child. Even the women cried: ‘Is she not beautiful?’ And the tribute of the woman is the ultimate possibility of a woman’s victory.”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BEGINNING OF THE NIGHT
“Christine was quite blind to the admiration which moved about her path. Now that she had taken the bolder step, and knew that another moment would bring her face to face with Count Paul, her heart beat warningly, its pulsations shaking her hands so that she pressed them against her side to still them. She saw the hall of the hotel only as a blaze of waving lights; the people were black and swaying forms. When she was summoned upstairs to a small apartment upon the first floor, she went with trembling steps, scarce feeling the touch of her feet upon the carpet. She entered the room and the Count stood before her, but no charity of preparation helped her tongue. She was with her lover again, but she was dumb.
“The Count was wearing the uniform in which he had presented himself to the Emperor. He had been in the act of writing a letter when the child came in; but now he rose from the table and held out his hand to her. He would have offered the same greeting to any stranger that might have come to him. Six weeks ago his heart beat the faster at the mention of little Christine’s name. But the priest had whispered in his ear the slander, ‘she has a lover in Vienna.’ He wrote to the capital to verify the report, and the answer came that the boy Zol was ever at her heels. It was then that the cord of his love had snapped sharply, like a cord long strained and worn to weakness. Suddenly, and by a supreme effort of his will, he had dried up the fount of his affections. Twice had passion come so near to him that her wings had burnt his brain while she passed. He said to himself that no woman should so hurt him again. He would forget that Christine of Zlarin had lived. A will of iron helped him to success in the resolution. He had come to Vienna when he found that it was no longer of moment to him whether the news which the priest told were true or false. He had thrown off the fetters; and no human hand might rivet them again.
“Many men have taken such a resolution as this; few have persevered in it. A whisper of the voice, a touch of the hand, a tear upon a pretty face, and the tide of affection surges up to sweep calculation from its bed, to foster the seeds of forgiveness and of forgetfulness. The last of the Zaloskis had asked himself, when they told him that Mademoiselle Zlarin would speak with him, if there might not be some power of her presence which would work a spell upon him. When Christine entered his room he knew that there was not. Pretty she was—he said that to himself—and the prettier for the fine furs wrapped about her little neck and ears. He thought that her maturing figure helped her to more commanding beauty. But the very fact that she was dressed as any other of the many women he met in the salons and at the Palace helped to destroy that illusion which had been so powerful to promote love at Jézero. Besides, was not she the wife of a woodlander’s son?