Was she jealous even of the dead women whom Arthur painted?—no less than of his living friends?
Eugénie came close to her, took the irresponsive hand in hers, tucked the shawls closer round the wasted limbs, bent over her, chatting and caressing. Then, as the sun began to drop quickly, Madame de Pastourelles rose, and went to the corner of the château, to see if the gentlemen were in sight. But in less than a minute Mrs. Welby called her back.
'I must go in now,' she said, fretfully. 'This place is really too cold!'
'She won't let me go to meet them,' thought Eugénie, involuntarily; sharply reproaching herself, a moment afterwards, for the mere thought.
But when Elsie had been safely escorted home, Eugénie slipped back through the darkening streets, taking good care that her path should not lead her across her father and Arthur Welby.
She fled towards the western flight of the Hundred Steps, and ran down the vast staircase towards the Orangerie, and the still shining lake beyond, girdled with vaporous woods. A majesty of space and light enwrapt her, penetrated, as everywhere at Versailles, with memory, with the bitterness and the glory of human things. In the distance the voices of the children, still playing beside their nurses on the upper terrace, died away. Close by, a white Artemis on her pedestal bent forward—eager—her gleaming bow in air, watching, as it were, the arrow she had just sped toward the windows of Madame de Pompadour; and beside her, a nymph, daughter of gods, turned to the palace with a free, startled movement, shading her eyes that she might gaze the more intently on that tattered tricolour which floats above the palace of 'Le Roi Soleil.'
* * * * *
'Oh, poor Arthur—poor Arthur! And I did it!—I did it!'
It was the cry of Eugénie's inmost life.
And before she knew, she found herself enveloped in memories that rolled in upon her like waves of storm. How long it had been before she would allow herself to see anything amiss with this marriage she had herself made! And, indeed, it was only since Elsie's illness that things dimly visible before had sprung into that sharp and piteous relief in which they stood to-day. Before it, indications, waywardnesses, the faults of a young and petted wife. But since the physical collapse, the inner motives and passions had stood up bare and black, like the ribs of a wrecked ship from the sand. And as Eugénie had been gradually forced to understand them, they had worked upon her own mind as a silent, yet ever-growing accusation, against which she defended herself in vain.