Othmar and Béthune, watching her, both thought, 'She has found out she is only a plaything, and she is resentful.' Othmar thought, in addition, 'If only she knew how very little time she will even be as much as that!'
They saw without surprise, but with contempt, that Loswa, through whose imprudence she was there, avoided her, was evidently ashamed to seem acquainted with her, and devoted himself assiduously to two or three of the great ladies. Loswa wished to show her that if he had sought her for sake of his art, he had better interests and occupation than a little peasant in knitted stockings could afford him. In himself he was angered against her for the slightness of the impression he had made on her, and the indifference with which she had treated him after he had honoured her by taking her for a model.
'She is a little sea-mouse that came up in Miladi's deepwater net to-day,' he said with a slighting laugh to the great ladies who asked him about her.
Damaris overheard, and her child's heart burnt with rage and scorn against them.
'He broke bread with me yesterday, and he ridicules me to-day!' she thought, with her primitive islander's notions as to the sanctity of the rites of hospitality. She hated this soft-eyed, soft-voiced man, who had made an effigy of her with his colours, and had brought to her these cruel strangers, who had in a single hour made such havoc of her peace. And they had told her that she should be back at Ave Maria, and it was now night; deep night, she thought it; for she did not know that though these rooms were all lit artificially, and the windows had now been long closed, behind these thick draperies of golden plush the last glow of daylight had scarcely then faded from the western skies.
What would they think on the island?—and what would Catherine and Raphael do?
No one now noticed her since they had ceased to stare at her as a young barbarian; no one now remembered her, sought her, or cared for her; she seemed likely to pass the whole afternoon in a corner, undisturbed and unremembered, like a little sea-mouse, as he called her, too insignificant even to be expelled!
On her island nothing could have daunted her, silenced her, troubled her; she was mistress there of the soil and of herself; she was proud and intrepid as any sovereign in her own tiny kingdom; but here all her courage deserted her; she only realised how utterly she was unlike all these people around her; she was only conscious of the rude texture of her gown, of the rough wool of her hose, of the sea-brown on her hands and arms, of the red on her cheeks blown there by the wind and the weather.
All these women were delicate and pale as the waxen bells of the begonia, as the creamy column of the tuberose.
She had been innocently vain, unconsciously proud of herself; everybody had told her she was handsome, and her own sense had told her that she was born with finer mind and higher organisation than were possessed by those who were her daily companions. And now she felt that she was nothing—nothing—only an ignorant and common peasant. She was well enough at Bonaventure, but she was a poor little savage here.