‘What an idiot he is,’ she thought; ‘as if that tone could ever succeed with me!’
She had herself become amused, serene, good-tempered, immediately, that with the entrance of Othmar the twin masks of tragedy and comedy had appeared to her prescient eyes to lie upon the stage of the terrace of La Jacquemerille. The whole place changed to her: the view was beautiful, the house was quaint and full of colour and variety, the orange wood was a delightful bit of local colour, the marble colonnade and the brown wooden balconies were absurd certainly, but garlanded about with all those sweet American creepers they had a graceful effect; nowhere else in December would you get roses and geraniums and white marbles and blue waves, and a thermometer at 20° Réaumur.
Othmar had brought that dramatic element into her life without which, despite her really very high intelligence, ennui was apt to descend upon her. When his eyes encountered that look they became very cold, and had a challenge in them: the challenge of a man who defies a woman to make him again the slave of her caprices. Her husband saw nothing of those glances. Geraldine saw more even than there was to see, and became moody and dejected. He only roused himself now and then to say what he thought might be hostile or disagreeable to the new comer. His remarks were ignored by Othmar, which increased his irritation. The Princess was amused, as she was, occasionally, at a good theatre, by the sullenness of the one man and by the coldness of the other. Both had elements, perhaps, of tragedy and comedy. She felt a sudden exhilaration and increase of interest, such as a person fond of a theatre feels when the great actor of the hour makes his entry on the scene. Geraldine was very useful, she had known him several years: he was always hopelessly in love with her, timid, devoted, and obedient; but he had no originality of character to make him very interesting. He was extremely good-looking, very popular, and very amiable, but he was commonplace; he had not the wit of his sister. She had admitted him into her intimacy because he was humble, handsome, and usually so docile that he seldom irritated her, but he gave no interest to her life whatever; whereas Othmar—she had scarcely ever confessed it even to herself—but whilst Othmar had been lost to sight in the wilds of Asia, society had seemed to her even more stupid than usual.
One had been in love with her for a year; the other two years before had loved her. There was a considerable difference in the two passions, which she, with her analytical mind, could perfectly appraise.
For the one she was quite sure of her sentiment in return. He was good-looking, agreeable, useful, submissive; he diverted her sometimes, wearied her occasionally, obeyed her always. She liked him, and liked better still to tease him. The other had brought into her life a sense of a stormier emotion than she cared to raise. He had been more in earnest than she chose to allow; he had loved her imperiously, ardently, unreasonably; when she had made light of it, he had left her with indignation and scorn. He had been one of those who had fought a duel about her, though none but himself and his adversary had ever known that she was the cause of it, a card at écarté having served as the colourable pretext. She had never been quite sure what she had felt for him; admiration in a way, perhaps, but more, she thought, dislike. But his had been one of the conquests which had most flattered her. When he had left all his habits and friends and possessions to plunge into Asian solitudes, she had felt that her power over him was illimitable. And now he had returned and told her, with as much chill assertion as a regard could convey, that her power existed no more for him. She did not care, but the change interested her, and piqued her.
‘Poor Othmar!’ she had said often to herself, when remembering the passages which had passed between them, and thinking of him in Asia; and now he was back from Asia, and sitting on her garden-terrace at La Jacquemerille, and was telling her by manner and by glance—perhaps telling her too persistently and insistantly for it to be entirely true—that he had vanquished his madness.
It had been a strong if short-lived madness, born first in a country-house in the Ardennes, in autumn-woods and tapestried galleries and the stately revelries of a Legitimist party of pleasure, fanned by her own will into flame in the course of a brilliant, giddy, insensate winter season in Paris. Then with spring had come the decisive moment when he had declined to be content any longer with his position, and he had been lightly laughed at, disdainfully jested with; and had revolted, and had gone out of Europe after a duel which had made even her tranquil pulses beat a little quickly in apprehension of the possible issue.
With her usual consummate tact she had so borne herself that the six or eight months’ devotion, in which Othmar had been the shadow of her every step, had attracted no injurious notice from her husband or her world. It was known that he was passionately attached to her, but so many were so also, that beyond a little more attention than usual, because he was a more conspicuous person than most, the great world of Paris only smiled and watched to see if the snowflake melted. It did not melt, and he went to Asia. The duel had only come out of a trivial dispute at a club, so every one believed, Prince Napraxine as innocently as the rest.
It was after the departure of Othmar that her society took to naming her the flocon de neige. It seemed strange, both to men and women, that Othmar should have been so near her so long and have left no impression on her life. He had usually a strong influence on those whom he sought; in this instance he had been the magnetised, not the magnetiser.
Men always quoted Princess Nadine to their wives as an example to be followed for the serene indifference with which she flirted all the year through, yet never was compromised by a breath of calumny. Their wives sometimes retorted that she had no heart, so could not lose it.