"This loss, however, has a compensation: those shares are now almost worthless. Since the colliery explosion, and the impossibility of extinguishing the fire in the mine, they have fallen to nothing."
"That does not concern me."
"I have not quite finished. The clergyman who was your friend, whose dreams were of a bishop's mitre, has returned to his monastery."
"I have known that some time."
"You seem to have learned everything. Perhaps you know also that your manager has cancelled your engagement and given your part to another actress?"
"Here is the letter," answered Eveline, drawing a crumpled paper from her pocket. And then she looked at the prince with proud contempt. She was wondrously beautiful. "Have you taken the trouble to come here to tell me all this?" she asked, her eyes gleaming not through tears but with indignation.
"I did not come here on that account," answered the prince, sitting down on the sofa and bending over her. "I came to speak to you frankly. Do you not see that the whole fabric upon which your golden dreams were built has crumbled? The Bondavara mine is on fire; the shares are falling; the prime-minister is disgraced; the prince is under restraint; your husband is dead; your property will be sold by auction; you are dismissed from the theatre. The five acts of the drama are played out. Let us applaud the finish, if we are so minded, and let us begin again. I can give you back your shares. I can get you a palace in the Maximilian Strasse. I can buy back for you all your seized goods—your furniture, your diamonds, your horses. I can arrange matters with the manager of the theatre; you shall be reinstated as prima donna on better terms than before. I can give you a far greater position than you have ever enjoyed, and I can offer you a truer, more self-sacrificing, more adoring lover than you have possessed. His name is Waldemar Sondersheim." He bowed low before her.
Eveline looked with intense gravity at the top of his boots.
Waldemar was now certain that he was master of the situation. He took from his waistcoat-pocket a watch, and pressed it into her hand.
"My sweetest love, my time is precious. I am expected at the stock-exchange. The Kaulmann speculation has to be crushed. It is just twelve o'clock. I give you one hour to think over what I have said and to decide your own fate. I am content to wait until then; it is only one word I ask for—yes or no."