Othmar

by Ouida

'One needs not to be famous to suffer that curse,' said Othmar. 'Whoever is in the world has it. Private life is a thing of the past; we are all expected to dine and to sup, and to spread our bridal-beds and our death-beds, in public, like the monarchs of old. An age which has invented the electric light has abolished solitude and respects no privacy; it will end in forcing all âmes d'élite to find and form a new Thebaïd.'

'If they can anywhere find a square mile without a tramway and a telephone!' said Rosselin, tenderly touching a tea-rose which blossomed in the cold wet weather against the low white wall of his house.

Then he said abruptly:

'What does your wife say now of her second Desclée?'

Othmar was angered to feel that the natural interrogation embarrassed him.

'My wife has forgotten both her prophecies and the subject of them,' he said with a certain impatience and bitterness in the accent with which the words were spoken.

'And you have not refreshed her memory?'

'I think it would be useless.'

Rosselin was silent: he was not pleased. He angrily thought of Béthune, and wondered if he would speak of his encounter with Damaris.