CHAPTER LIV.
When that time had passed she descended the grand staircase and joined her friends in the conservatories; the tea roses renewed in the white velvet of her corsage, the great pearls lying on her white soft breast. No one was aware of anything changed in her manner or aspect. Twice or thrice she looked nervously at the doors; that was all; she was afraid of seeing her husband enter.
When he came she looked away from him, and Blanche de Laon, who was near her, saw a certain tremor on her lips, and thought with victorious pleasure, though uncertain of the cause: Ça vous blesse, hein? Ça vous blesse?
At the long dinner she was somewhat silent and absorbed, but her world was used to her caprices, and knew that she was seldom pleased long. Men endeavoured all the more to amuse her. They thought that they succeeded. They did not know that instead of the brilliant room, the faces of her friends, the flowers and fruits of the table, and the frescoes of the walls, she only saw a little low dark chamber with a girl dying miserably in it, like a strangled dog, as the moon rose.
She had never believed in sacrifice or in remorse, or if forced to believe in them she had said with disdain, 'What melodrama!' But she believed now.
Shame and remorse approached the delicate hauteur of her life and touched it for the first time. What she had thought so low had humbled her.
The dinner seemed very long to her, the evening slow to pass; the burden of the world can be at times as heavy as the travail of the poor; there were the usual pastimes, and wit, and gaiety; Paul of Lemberg was there, and the ineffable sweetness of his music thrilled through the flower-scented air; people laughed low, and played high, and made love in shadowy corners; it was all pretty, and graceful, and amusing. But she, amidst it all, only heard a voice which cried to her:
'Why will you not believe?'
She only saw a grave made in dark wet earth, and a girl's body thrust into it in cruel haste, and sods thrown in one on another on the lifeless limbs, the dull hair, the disfigured throat; it was horrible—horrible! Why had she not left her alone in the gay sunshine, under the orange trees, by the blue water?