'What can you seek from me? Surely my husband gives you all you want!'
All the icy disdain, the cruel irony, the scorn of her as of a creature beneath contempt, passed over Damaris almost unfelt. She had the intense self-absorption which a strong purpose and a passionate generosity inspire.
'I came to Paris to see you,' she said boldly. 'I tried to stop your carriage; you thought I was a beggar, you threw me a coin; I have come here because I hoped that I might speak to you. Listen to me once, this once; then I will go away for ever.'
Her hearer looked at her with less bitterness of scorn, with a slowly awakening wonder. What was strange, unusual, startling, had always a fascination for her; a position which was intricate and unintelligible, a character which was mysterious and for the hour unfathomable, always possessed for her an attraction which nothing else could have. Had an assassin been at her throat she would have stayed his hand only to ask his motives. The supreme interest of the enigma of human life with her surpassed all other more personal considerations. Psychological analysis far outweighed with her all personal emotions. What the young mistress of her husband could seek her for, or want of her, seemed to her so odd that for the moment the strangeness of the supplication outweighed her pitiless scorn of the suppliant.
Her dignity would never have allowed her to cross the width of a street to see this girl who had caused such division between herself and Othmar; but the wish to see her had been strong in her for some time. Her philosophic inquisitiveness before all mysteries of human character, and her artistic appreciation of all human beauty combined to make Damaris interesting to her as a study, though hateful as a living creature.
'I will hear you,' she said, and drew her skirts from the touch of Damaris, and seated herself with the coldness of a sovereign who listens but does not forgive, of a judge who examines but does not pardon.
'Great heaven, how handsome she is!' she thought with involuntary admiration; and beneath her haughty calm and scorn there burned the fires of a jealousy which scorned itself. Was this the child whom she had brought over the sea? The peasant in blue serge and leather shoes whom she had seen hidden from others in her drawing-rooms like a startled stray sheep under a hedge?
Damaris stood before her pale, infinitely troubled, passionately pained, but so nerved with the force of her purpose that she had lost all sense of fear and of hesitation. Her voice came from her lips quick and low, and her hands were clasped together in earnestness as she spoke at length to this woman who had been the terror of her dreams so long.
'I do not know what they have told you of me,' she said, 'but I am come here to tell you the truth. I think there are those who believe that I am coarse, and selfish, and base, that there are those who believe that he who saved me out of the streets, and from death, only seems to me the mere means to an end, and that end my own renown, my own riches, my own gain. But that is not true. So little is it true that now that I know they say it, the world shall never see me whilst I live. You know, it was you yourself who first told me that I could make the world care for me. You put that thought in my head and my heart, and it worked and worked there, and left me no peace. He tried to dissuade me, because he said that an obscure life was best, but I would not believe. I wished to be great, I wished to come before you some day, and to make you say, "After all she has done well; after all she has genius——"'
She paused, overcome by the rush of her own memories, by the flood of thoughts she was longing to utter.