Pshaw! how like a man it would be, she thought; if he had been attracted by a little peasant with brown hands and bare feet!
If, after all, he were just like other men, she thought; if he had a villa on the Seine, a cottage at Meudon, where he passed his time when he was supposed to be closeted with the Rothschild, or gone to a conference with Bleichrœder? Would she care much? She thought not. She would feel that half good-natured disdain which a woman, passionless herself, always feels for the riotous passions of men; but she did not think that it would affect her peace of mind in any way.
If it were a woman in her own world, yes; she would have resented that. She would have felt it an offence and an outrage. She would have disliked the comments of her own world on it; she would have been impatient of the ridicule or the compassion which it might have entailed on herself from others; and she would have been angered at the possible ascendency over his intellect, and the possession of his confidence, which such a rival would perchance have acquired to her own despite.
But of what she would have called a mere vulgar liaison she would have felt no jealousy, not even much surprise, for she considered that men were slaves of their appetites, even when they were masters of their intelligence.
For the whole ways of life of a man she had that contempt which a woman who reads their hearts and knows their follies is apt lo entertain when to herself the senses say little, and their gratification is indifferent. But if it were a question of the possession of his mind and thoughts by a new passion, if anyone had passed before her and taken that pre-eminence in his imagination which she had held so long, she became irritably conscious that this would be unwelcome to her. A love which reigned over his fancy, occupied his memory in absence, and had empire over his will, would be an assumption of her own place, would be a seizure of all that more spiritual and subtle dominion which had been peculiarly her own.
She had had unbounded influence over him for ten years; she had been so certain of her influence that she had been for once absurdly credulous of its duration. Though she knew that passions wane like moons, yet she had never doubted in her soul (whatever scepticism her lips might have declared in jest) that his for her would never become less. She had never truly realised that the time would come when her surpassing seductions might leave him cold as one who hears a twice-told tale, when his immortal passion for her might lie dead like last year's leaves.
She had always piqued herself upon the wisdom with which she had looked at all accidents and sentiments of life. She had always believed that no weakness or instability of human nature could ever take her by surprise. And yet to find that at last she had lost her sorcery for his senses and her exclusive reign over his thoughts astonished her with a shock of humiliated surprise.
During the pause between the two parts into which 'Ruth' was divided, the guests of the Prince of Lemberg left the music-room and strayed at their will through the other apartments of his beautiful little house, which was modestly called a pavilion, and stood withdrawn behind gardens and high walls of clipped evergreens. It was four o'clock in the winter's day, and the whole of the rooms were lighted as at night; the hundred or so of people who were there represented all that was greatest in fashion, with a few of those who were greatest in art. Belonging, as he deemed, to both categories, Loris Loswa was amongst those present.
'Bring me some tea,' she said to him when she had seated herself in a little alcove filled with bananas and palms, whose green branches drooped against a background of Florentine tapestries, and threw up in high relief the dead gold and dusky furs of her costume. When he brought it she signed to him to seat himself on a stool at her feet. He obeyed, flattered and charmed.
'Loris,' she said in a low tone to him, 'what became of the subject of that sketch you made two years ago on that island in the seas beyond Monaco?'