"What is strange?" asks Stasy.
"Why, that you have seen him," the Princess replies; "that he is yet alive; in fact, that he ever did live, and that we loved each other. I was wont for so many years to regard that episode at Baden-Baden as a dream that at last I forgot that the dream had any connection with reality." The words fall from the beautiful woman's lips slowly, softly, with veiled richness and intense melancholy. After a pause she goes on: "I seem to have read there in Baden-Baden a romance which enthralled my entire being! It was on a lovely summer day, and the roses were in bloom all about me, while delicious music in the distance fell dreamily and softly on my ear, and the fragrance of roses and the charm of melody mingled with the poem I was reading. Suddenly, and before I had read to the end, the romance slipped from my hands, and since then I have sought it in vain! But it still seems to me more charming than all the romances in the world; and I cannot cease from searching for it, that I may read the last chapter." Then, suddenly changing her tone, she shrugs her shoulders and says, "Who can tell what disappointment awaits me?--how Edgar may have changed? How does he seem? Is he gay, contented with his lot?"
"No, Sonja, that he is not," Stasy assures her, sentimentally. "To be sure, he is too proud to parade his grief; in society he bears himself coldly, indifferently; but there is an inexpressible melancholy in his look. Oh, he has not forgotten!"
Stella's eyes flash angrily.
"She lies!" the heart in her breast cries out; "she lies!"
Meanwhile, the friends clasp each other's hands sympathetically.
"He never knew how I suffered," the Princess sighs. "Does he suppose that I accepted Oblonsky's hand with any thought of self? No,--a thousand times no! I determined to free Edgar from the martyrdom he was enduring from his family because of me. I took upon myself the burden of a joyless, loveless marriage, I had myself nailed to the cross, for his sake!"
"She lies!" Stella's heart cries out again; "she lies!"
But Stasy sighs, "I always understood you, Sonja." After a pause she adds, "You know, I suppose, that he grew gray immediately after that sad affair,--after your marriage,--almost in a single night?"
"Gray!" murmurs the Princess; "gray! And he had such beautiful dark-brown hair. He must have heard much evil of me; perhaps he believed it: it pleases men to think evil of the women who have caused them suffering. Well, you know how innocent were all the little flirtations with which I tried in vain to fill the dreary vacuum of my existence, from the artists whom I patronized, to Zino Capito, with whom I trifled. If only some one could explain it all to him!--or if"--the Princess's eyes gleam with conscious power,--"if I could only meet him myself, then----"