She laughed a little to herself, not mirthfully, as she strolled through the intense light of the Northern night, her Kossack following like her shadow. A poor drudge like that servant woman in Jura had been content with her life, whilst she, the Princess Napraxine, in all the perfection of youth, beauty, and great rank, was often so dissatisfied with it that she could have drugged herself out of it with morphine from sheer ennui!
What was the use of the highest culture, if that was all it brought you? A whimsical fancy crossed her that she wished her Kossack would try and assassinate her; it would be something new, it might make her life seem worth the having, if somebody would try and take it away. She was only three-and-twenty years old, and her future seemed so immensely long that she felt tired at the very prospect of it, as one feels tired at the sight of a long dull road which one is bound to follow.
The eternal monotony of the great world would be for ever about her. She had too great rank, too great riches, for ambition to present any prizes to her. To attempt to thrust Platon Napraxine into high offices of the State would have been as absurd as to make a bear out of Finland a magistrate or a general. He was a very great noble, but he would never have wit enough even to play a decent hand at whist, much less to conduct a negotiation or sway a Council.
‘One might have had ambition for Othmar,’ she thought involuntarily, as his image rose unsummoned from the sea of silvery shadows around her; ‘he had none for himself, but he might have been spurred, stimulated, seduced, by a woman he had loved. There would have been many things possible to him; the financier is the king, the Merlin, of the modern world, and might become its Arthur also.’
She thought with impatience of that summer night, as it was shining on the towers and woods of Amyôt. She felt as if something of her own had been stolen from her, some allegiance due to her unlawfully transferred. He should have had patience, he should have waited on her will, he should have accepted her rebuffs, he should have followed her steps through life as the Kossack was following them through the dewy grass.
Poor stupid Geraldine would have been grateful to do so much, or Seliedoff, or so many others. Othmar alone had dared to say to her, ‘I will be nothing or all.’
Therefore his memory abided with her and moved her, and had power over her, and at times an irritable gnawing sense of something which might have been stole upon her. What could that child give him at Amyôt?—white limbs, clear eyes, a rose-bloom of blushes; but besides? what sympathy, comprehension, inspiration? what of the higher delights of the passions?
The thought of him irritated her. There was a defiance, an insolence, in his assumption of being able to command his destiny in independence of herself, which offended her; it was unlike what others did. She was aware that it was done out of bravado, or so she believed; but it was not thus that the fates on which she had deigned to lay her finger had usually been closed. Something even of contempt for him at seeking such a refuge from herself mingled with her irritation. It seemed to her weak and commonplace.
‘Madame,’ said the voice of Melville through the shadows, ‘is it quite safe to ramble so late, despite the trusty Kossack and his lance?’
She turned; her head enwrapped in gossamer, till he saw nothing but the cloud of lace and the two dusky, jewel-like eyes.