When she reclined upon a divan or leaned back in an arm-chair there was a suggestion of the odalisque in her attitude; but in her walk there was a short, sharp rhythm; it was firm and despotic like that of a race-horse, and yet light as the fluttering of a bird. She was tall and not too slender--the beauty of her shoulders and bust was so great that it had become famous--her head was small and faultlessly poised upon her neck--her features were not perfectly regular, but how charming was her face! pale, with ripe red lips, and brown hair with a shimmer of gold about the temples and the back of the neck. The cheek-bones were rather too high, the face not quite oval enough; the brow was low; the profile haughty, and delicately modelled.
The most remarkable feature of Wjera's face was her eyes. Long in their openings, but usually half-closed and shaded by dark eyelashes, they were as changing in colour as in expression, and there was in them something uncanny--mysterious--no one dared to look full into their depths.
Of course she created a sensation in Vienna, and yet she had almost no suitors--they were afraid of her and--she had a history, neither disgraceful nor dishonourable, but yet a history.
In St. Petersburg, where she had been with her father, she had been distinguished by the homage of a prince of the blood, and was finally betrothed to him. For a year the betrothal was kept up, and then the tie was suddenly snapped. The world discovered the reason in the fact that Wjera could not consent to a morganatic marriage; her ambition had been defeated. The true significance of the breach the world at large did not divine. Only very few suspected that Wjera had loved the man--so much her inferior in all save rank and birth--with all the fervour and poetic purity that are found in Russian girls alone. She did not see him as he really was, handsome, with a superficial air of distinction, but mentally coarse--alternating between brutish excesses and superstitious penances--at once cynical as a roué and sentimental as a school-miss,--no, she endowed him nobly in her imagination.
Of all poets in the world the hearts of young girls are the most highly gifted. There are women whose illusions are so tough that they carry them to their graves undamaged; there are others who voluntarily patch up the rents, made by their understanding in their illusions, in order that an ideal--of which they would perhaps be ashamed if it stood unveiled before them, and to break with which they yet have neither the desire nor the force--may not be without a decent garment to cover it.
It was not so with Wjera; when doubt had once sown discord between her head and her heart, she fought out the battle unflinchingly, inexorably, in strict honesty, and when the conflict was over her dream had vanished. In this wondrously lovely illusion she had exhausted all the ideality of her nature. Her reason gained the upperhand at last, and ever after she analyzed her fellow-mortals with sharp precision; judging them with harsh justice, and speaking of the affections with an unaffected, contemptuous coolness very rare in a girl so young.
Time passed by. She came to be twenty-six years old. She was the eldest and the handsomest of five daughters, and her distaste for marriage increased the difficulty of providing for the other sisters, and excited unpleasant remark among her family circle. Chance introduced Count Lodrin to her acquaintance, and perhaps because he seemed to her a respectable nullity, she selected him for her husband.
No one could remember ever having seen so ill-matched a pair. She, aglow with life, delighting in physical exercises, a reckless and indefatigable horsewoman--to whom a steeple-chase was no more than is a waltz to other women,--and he, paying with an attack of illness for every unusual physical effort, not even daring to take a long drive without an extra cushion at his back.
Whilst his thoughts moved slowly in a traditional roundabout way, 'her woman's wit flew straight and did exactly hit,' before the Count had cleared his throat for his first 'consequently.'
Her quick wit bewildered him; her outspoken acuteness of discernment offended him. There was a world-wide dissimilarity between her views and his. The Count was a strict Catholic; the Countess was inclined to scepticism; although cast in a loftier mould, in her daring mockery and her graceful eccentricity she recalled the fine ladies of the eighteenth century--of that time when social and mental freedom, made fashionable by philosophers, had not yet been degraded to vulgarity by demagogues. His wife's wicked wit shocked poor Count Lodrin. Much ridicule was cast upon the couple, but every one was none the less glad to belong to the brilliant circle which the Countess drew around her, and daily the wonder grew that calumny could not touch the beautiful wife of this dead-and-alive dotard.