‘Do tell me, princess,’ he murmured timidly. ‘You will stay now that you are here, will you not?’
‘How can I answer for the duration of my fancies? Perhaps I may, if you amuse me well enough.’
‘I would rather interest you.’
‘Ah, my friend, that is quite impossible. Even to be amused is hard enough, when one is not in the humour. When one is in the humour, it is even fun to go out fishing; when one is not, one is dull even at a masked ball at Petersburg. We are like the cuttle-fish, we make our sphere muddy with our own dulness. How would you suggest that I should find any interest here? There will be no society except some gouty statesmen and some sickly women, a few yachtsmen, a pigeon-shooter or two, and quantities of people one cannot know.’
‘There will be heaps of people who know you,’ said Geraldine, almost with a groan; ‘at least, if you deign to allow them the entrée of La Jacquemerille. If I might presume to advise, the place is all to itself, they cannot come if you do not invite them. It is as nearly simple nature here as a mondaine and an élégante like you can ever bring herself to go. You have the sea at your feet and the mountains at your back; you can have absolute repose and leisure unless you wilfully bring a horde of men and women from Nice and Monaco. You are so clever; you might make endless sketches. If I were you, I should make it the occasion to get away from the world a little; if the world you must have, I should take it in the Avenue Josephine instead of at La Jacquemerille.’
The Princess laughed languidly, and looked at her cigarette.
‘You want a solitude à deux, I daresay! But you see there are Platon and Wilkes against that, not to mention my own inclinations.’
‘Pray, be serious.’
‘Why? When one is in the mood to be serious, one does not take a nondescript toy within five miles of Nice. I daresay you are right; a quiet life for a little while would be very wholesome, it would certainly be a novelty, but it would be beyond me. I am not a stupid woman, I am not a silly woman certainly; no, I am quite convinced I have a brain, though as for a soul, I don’t know, and I am afraid I don’t very much care. A brain, however, I have; Wilkes is even unkind enough to call me learned. But still, my dear Ralph, I am, as you observed, that much-abused animal, a mondaine. When once we belong to the world can we ever get rid of the world? Jamais! au grand jamais! If we try to drink spring water, we put it somehow or other in a liqueur glass. If we smell at a hedge-rose, somehow or other Piver has got in it before us, and given it the scent of a sachet.’
‘You are very witty, but——’