‘She has served me well,’ he said simply. ‘You do not understand attachment of any kind, Princess.’
‘It is only an amiable form of prejudice. Certainly I do not understand why you should be attached to a thing made of wood and metal.’
‘Or to a thing made of flesh and blood! I believe that is equally ridiculous in the eyes of Madame Napraxine,’ said Othmar, with some bitterness. ‘May I ask, how are your children?’ he added after a pause.
‘My two ugly little boys? Oh, quite well; they are never anything else. They are as strong as ponies. They are very ugly; they have the Tartar face, which is the ugliest in Europe; they are so like Platon that it is quite absurd.’
Othmar was silent; the words did not seem to him in her usual perfectly good taste. They did not accord with the delicate narcissus-like face of their speaker.
‘I remember that you never cared for your children,’ he said, and added, after a pause, ‘Nor for anything that had the misfortune to love you.’
‘I do not think the children love me at all,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Why should they? Their father they adore because he adores them. It is always quid pro quo in any love.’
‘Not always,’ said Othmar, curtly.
‘Ah, you love me still,’ thought Princess Nadine, without astonishment.
Aloud she said, ‘It must be, or the thing is absurd, it dies a natural death, or rather, is starved to death; nothing one-sided has any strength.’