'No,' she said sharply. 'What should you do there? You are no student of the antique. That child is a daughter of the gods—a sister of Phædra and of Medea—no contemporary of yours or mine. Let her alone. She will not suit your canvas.'
'Will she play at Amyôt?'
'I do not think so.'
She mounted her horse and rode in silence through the fields and lanes. Her tireless incessant voice for once was mute, and her face was troubled and surprised. All the malice and the vileness which had been in her thoughts, her hopes, her suggestions, had been scared and confounded by the sense of a great unintelligible passion, the nobility of which was incomprehensible to her, yet affected her with a dim sense of its strength and its strangeness.
Once she laughed aloud and turned to Loswa.
'Desclée! Desclée never equalled Damaris Bérarde. What an incomparable actress the future will enjoy whether we get her to Amyôt or not!'
'You mean——' asked Loswa perplexed.
'My dear Loris! Almost she persuaded me that she loves Otho Othmar for himself and not for his millions! Almost she persuaded me too that he is not as yet her lover, though he may be when he will! You will grant that she surpasses Desclée.'