'Do not come in, do not come near him,' cried the woman, 'oh, my dear, it would be death; but send some one who is old and will not mind; the old never take this sickness—and I have been all alone till I am mad. My pretty baby—the prettiest, the youngest!'
Damaris looked at her with dull, blind eyes. A strange sense of fatality came on her; here was death—not death in the clear blue water which would never more smite her limbs with its joyous blows, and rock her in the cradle of its waves; but death which would end all things, which would put her away to rest under the green earth, which would purify her from greed and from baseness in his sight. She turned and entered through the doorway of the house.
'I am not afraid,' she said to the woman. 'I will stay with Pierrot.'
The woman strove to draw her back, but she would not be dissuaded from her choice.
'If God will it, I shall die,' she thought; 'and if I die, then perhaps she will believe, and he remember me.'
CHAPTER LIII.
The great Easter fêtes at Amyôt were successful with all that brilliancy of decoration and novelty of wit for which their mistress was famous to all Europe. The weather was mild, the guests were harmonious, the princes and their consorts were well amused; nothing more agreeable or more original had been known in the entertainments of the time; and the choicest and rarest forms of art were brought there to lend the dignity of scholarship to the graces and frivolities of pleasure.
No one noticed that the host and hostess of Amyôt never once spoke a word to each other throughout this week of ceremony and festivity, except such phrases as their reception of and courtesy to others compelled them to exchange. No one observed or suspected the bitter estrangement between them, so well did each play their parts in this pageantry and comedy of society. No one except Blanche de Laon, who thought with contentment: 'ça marche!'
Othmar had not seen his wife for one moment alone since the day when he had left her with the bitterness of her incredulity and her insult like ashes in his soul.