This was a trifle, no doubt, and he was not a man who ever disputed small matters. But the tone with which she had spoken had given it something of personal offence, and he could not shake from him the impression that she had purposely sent away the portrait. The exhibition was about to take place, no doubt, at the new gallery on the Trocadéro; Loswa having quarrelled violently with the committee of the Salon, had chosen to prove that the collection of his works would be more attractive to the public than anything which the Salon could offer without his assistance; but the manner in which this sketch had been removed from his study, conveyed to Othmar the impression of some personal motive, some personal meaning in the act.
Capricious as his wife always was, she yet was usually courteous. This insolence of the removal of his picture was unlike her.
She always held the very true creed that mutual politeness is the first of obligations to render the intimacy of daily life endurable.
He left her presence quickly, afraid of what his anger might bring him into saying. He had never as yet wholly lost his temper with her, though there were times when it was sorely tried.
Her cold, nonchalant, slighting tone was that which always tried it the most. Of all things which he most hated it was to be spoken to as Platon Napraxine had been; like the last of her lacqueys! as he thought bitterly now. She looked after him with some scorn.
'Is he gone to the Trocadéro to seize back his lost treasure?'
She had sent the sketch thither on purpose to see what he would do or say.
With an impulse which was as swift as thought itself and which he did not pause to consider, he turned back as he reached the threshold of her boudoir, and stood before her.
'Nadège,' he began with an impetuosity which yet had a certain timidity in it. 'There is something which I wished to tell you the other day. There is a reason which makes me especially regret that you should have sent that portrait for exhibition without referring the matter to me. Are you inclined to be patient enough to hear a little tale which might interest you perhaps if it were a sketch by Ludovic Halévy, but I fear will not do so told in my poor words?'