‘It is seven years. Oh, I do not think it would have done at all; you are too arrogant; we should have quarrelled before a month was out. Besides, I should have tormented you to do all manner of impossibilities; with your immense power, I should have expected you to buy me an empire.’
Othmar was very pale; the possibility of which she jested so airily was one he could not think of without a mist before his eyes, a quickening of his heart. He hesitated to say what rose to his lips; she would only call it vieux jeu.
‘I think you might be a great man, Othmar, if you were not Othmar,’ she pursued.
‘I do not feel the capabilities,’ he replied.
‘That is because you are what you are,’ she answered. ‘You are something like a king of England. A king of England might have all the talents, but he could never be a great man because his position binds him hand and foot, and makes a lay figure of him. You are not a lay figure, but the very fact that you are Otho Othmar prevents your being anything besides. I think, if I were you, I should buy some great sunshiny fantastic eastern kingdom, and reign there; you might lead the life of a Haroum Alraschid, and forget all about our stupid Europe with its big dinners, its blundering politics, its unreal religions, and its hideous dress.’
‘A charming dream—if you were with me.’
‘Oh, no; you would not want me; you would have two thousand slaves, each more beautiful than the others.’
‘All my life I shall want you!’
He spoke under his breath. He was leaning back in his chair; his face was cold, almost stern, but his eyes were ardent and full of passion. All night at Millo he had sworn to himself that never again would he succumb to her influence or allow her to triumph in the power she possessed over him, but in her presence he was unnerved, and unable to keep silent. She, lying back amongst her cushions, glanced at him under her long lashes, and understood very well the strife which went on in his soul; the pride of manhood which combatted the impulses of passion; the impetus which could not be resisted, the impatience of his own weakness which vibrated through his confession.
‘What was the use of your going to Mongolia; you could not escape me,’ she thought, with a little of that contemptuous indulgence which she always felt for her lovers’ follies, and a little of a newer and more personal gratification; for Othmar touched a certain chord in her mind, a certain pulse in her heart, which others had not done. There was nothing commonplace or trivial in him. There was a vague power, unused but existent, which commanded her respect. Nadine Napraxine despised the world too heartily herself not to have sympathy with the indifference he felt for his own potentialities and possessions. He was one of the masters of the world, and he only wished for one thing on earth—herself. There was a flattery in that which pleased even her, sated with compliment though she was. There were moments when she thought that if she had met him before, as he said, there would have been less ennui and more warmth in her life. ‘Only we should have been so sure to have tired of each other,’ she reflected. ‘People always do; it is the fault of marriage; it compels people at the onset to see so much of one another that they have nothing new left with which to meet the future. If you heard the best of Bach every day, you would get to hate Bach as intensely as you hate a street organ; the music would still be perfect, but it could not withstand incessant repetition. We should have been quite idylically in love for a few months; I am sure we should; but then we should have each gone our several ways, and in the end he would have been hardly better than Platon.’