‘Will you not honour me again?’ he said, angry at his own weakness. ‘Would you not dine with me to-morrow night? Or the day after to-morrow? I think the Prince would come.’
‘Oh! Platon would come certainly,’ said Nadine Napraxine, with a smile; ‘you are his especial friend. He shall come to you alone; then you can talk to him as much as you like about the burning of Moscow and—and—all those other dates for which you have so admirable a memory!’
She would say no more than that, and her musical slight laugh tantalised his ear as the boat was pushed off in the deep blue water, and the seamen bent above their oars.
Otho Othmar leaned against the marble balustrade and watched them row away towards the schooner, with an anger in which vain regrets and baffled desires were mingled disconsolately. He remained there till the sun was gone down, and the white canvas of the yacht had passed out of sight round a bend of the shore.
When he retraced his steps to his solitary house, he saw a tea-rose lying beside the gilded garden chair which she had occupied as she ate her strawberries. It was the one which she had gathered and dropped. He picked it up and put it in his coat.
‘Quand on aime on n’a que vingt ans,’ he thought with scorn for himself.
He entered the golden drawing-room, wrote a formal note of invitation to the Prince and Princess Napraxine, and said to one of his servants, ‘Send a messenger over with this letter the first thing in the morning to the villa that is called La Jacquemerille.’ Yet he had come from Asia with the firm resolve to show the Princess Napraxine that he had conquered all passion for her; and he was not on the whole a weak man.