To this patrician she would always be a half-barbarian and uncultured creature. The heart of the child asked with longing to go back to her old life in the sunny air by the blue water, with the homely people, with the simple wants, with the sound of the birds in the leaves, and the feel of the wind on the sea. But she knew that never could she go back so any more.
If her feet were to travel thither, her soul would not go.
The passion of the world, the aims of ambition, the heartsickness of jealousy and desire were all in her; where they have passed the soul is for ever a stranger to peace, even as where fire has burnt the soil of a green field, grass will grow no more.
'Why did she not let me alone?' she thought.
Between the second and the third acts, Rosselin left her to go to the foyer, where he had been for so many years so conspicuous a figure, and so dreaded a critic.
'Fasten the door after me, and if a thousand people should knock, let no one in until you hear my voice,' he said to her, drawing the door behind him.
Left to herself she drew back into the deepest shadow of the little den she occupied, and gazed as she would at the woman who had been destiny to her. She saw numerous gentlemen come and go in her box, make their reverence to her, linger if they were permitted, or withdraw and give place to others. Nadine had changed her position so that her profile only was now turned towards the house. She leaned her elbow on the cushion, and her cheek on her hand, a butterfly of emeralds sparkled under her shoulder; sometimes her face was hidden by the fan of white ostrich feathers, sometimes she furled the fan and let it lie unused beside the orchids.
Damaris watched her with the strange fascination of fear and of wonder, of hatred and admiration, which had moved her in the salons of St. Pharamond. All the words which Othmar had spoken a few days before, were sounding in her ears. Her simple and candid thoughts were beginning to gain something of the complexity, of the weariness, of the pain of his. She understood why he had loved this woman so much that, empty though his heart might be, it would remain untenanted. Innocent as Mignon, she yet watched her rival with something of the passion of Adrienne Lecouvreur.
'She is his, he is hers—and she does not care!' thought the child, in whom the ignorance of childhood still lingered, blent with the awakening strength and heat of a tropical nature.