'To the new Desclée!' she said, as her yacht glided out of its harbour and bore southward through smooth sparkling sapphire waters.
'A name of melancholy omen,' said Gui de Béthune. 'Sometimes I think Aimée Desclée is the most pathetic figure of our century.'
'She was a sensitive, and she was a poitrinaire,' answered Nadine with her sceptical little smile. 'What does physiology tell us? That genius is only a question of brain tissue and blood-globules, and that the Mois de Mai and the Prometheus Unbound are only the consequence of a kind of disease. It is so consoling for us; who have no disease, perhaps, but have also, alas, no genius! That is why the world is so fond of the physiologists. They are the great consolers of all mediocrity.'
CHAPTER X.
Damaris was gathering oranges and carrying them to the packing-sheds. She was bearing an empty skip upon her head, and kicking one of the golden balls before her through the grass, when a woman, unlike any woman that she had seen before, appeared to her astonished eyes amidst the emerald foliage of the orange-boughs and the lilac of the hepaticas which filled the grass.
'I am sure you know me again?' said the sweetest and coldest of voices. 'I am come to apologise to you for my rudeness. Here is Loswa, who is afraid to approach you; he will vouch for me.'
Damaris stood still and mute; she put the basket off her head, and looked in blank stupor at her visitant; her colour came and went painfully; all in a moment she seemed to herself to grow ugly, awkward, coarse, foolish, everything which was hideous and painful. She had no words at her command, she might have been born dumb. No man had any power to confuse her, but this beautiful woman paralysed her every nerve.
'I am come to apologise to you for my involuntary rudeness,' said her visitant in her sweetest manner. 'Your rebuke was apt and very deserved, but you may be sure that, had I really seen you I should not have incurred it.'
'It was I who was rude,' said Damaris, with her cheeks scarlet.