Although he could not have brought himself to apply to his wife for relief in his own affairs, it seemed to him comparatively easy to appeal to her for another. He did not for an instant doubt that she would comply with his request. She was not parsimonious, but hard, and he could endure that for another's sake. He went twice to her room, in hopes of finding her there, but she was still in the dining-room.
He frowned when her maid told him this, and, lighting a cigar, he went down into the garden, annoyed at the necessity of postponing his interview with his wife.
Meanwhile, Olga, out of spirits and unoccupied, had betaken herself to the library. All day she had felt as if she had lost something; she could not have told what ailed her. She took up a book to amuse herself; by chance it was the very novel of Turgenieff's which she had been about to read, seated in the old boat, when Fainacky had intruded upon her. She had left the volume in the park, whence it had been brought back to her by the gardener. She turned over the leaves, at first listlessly, then a phrase caught her eye,--she began to read. Her interest increased from chapter to chapter; she devoured the words. Her breath came quickly, her cheeks burned. She read on to where the hero, in an access of anger, strikes Zenaide on her white arm with his riding-whip, and she calmly kisses the crimson welt made by the lash.
There the book fell from the girl's hand; she felt no indignation at Zenaide's guilty passion, no horror of the cruel rage of the hero; no, she was conscious only of a kind of fierce envy of Zenaide, who could thus forgive. On the instant there awoke within her a passionate longing for a love which could thus triumph over all disgrace, all ill usage, and bear one exultantly to its heaven!
She had become so absorbed in the book as to be insensible to what was going on around her. Now she started, and shrank involuntarily. A step advanced along the corridor; she heard a door open and shut,--the door of Selina's dressing-room.
"Who is there?" Selina's voice exclaimed.
"I." It was Treurenberg who replied.
Selina's dressing-room was separated by only a partition-wall from the library.
It was well-nigh noon, and Selina's maid was dressing her mistress's hair, when Treurenberg entered his wife's dressing-room for the first time for years without knocking. She had done her best to recover from the agitation caused her by Fainacky's words, had taken a bath, and had then rested for half an hour. Guests were expected in the afternoon, and she must impress them with her beauty, and must outshine the pale girl whom Lato had the bad taste to admire. When Treurenberg entered she was sitting before the mirror in a long, white peignoir, while her maid was brushing her hair, still long and abundant, reddish-golden in colour. Her arms gleamed full and white from out the wide sleeves of her peignoir.
"Who is it?" she asked, impatiently, hearing some one enter.