only we must substitute for aigu some prettier word, say perlé.’
She laughed, thinking of Boris Seliedoff, with more perception of his absurdities than of his offences, as her first movement of wrath subsided into that ironical serenity which was most natural to her of all her varying moods.
‘The violoncello does not know itself why it weeps,’ she replied, ‘so why should the fife not laugh at it? Really, if I were not so impious a being, I would join your Church for the mere pleasure of confessing to you; you have such fine penetration, such delicate suggestion. But then, there is no living being who understands women as a Catholic priest does who is also a man of the world. Adieu! or rather, I hope, au revoir. You are going away for Lent? Ours will soon be here. I shock every Russian because I pay no heed to its sanctity. Did you ever find, even amongst your people, any creatures so superstitious in their religion as Russians? Platon is certainly the least moral man the sun shines on, but he would not violate a fast nor neglect a rite to save his life. It is too funny! Myself, I have fish from the Baltic and soups (very nasty ones) from Petersburg, and deem that quite concession enough to Carême. My dear Monsignore, why should there be salvation in salmon and sin in a salmis?’
Melville was not at all willing to enter on that grave and large question with so incorrigible a mocker. He took his leave, and bowed himself out from her presence; whilst Nadine Napraxine went to her own rooms to dress for dinner and look at the domino which she would wear some hours later at a masked ball which was to take place that night in her own house in celebration of the last evening of the Catholic Carnival.
‘Le masque est si charmant que j’ai peur du visage,’
she murmured inconsequently, as she glanced at the elegant disguise and the Venetian costume to be worn beneath it which had been provided for her. ‘That is the sort of feeling which one likes to inspire, and which one also prefers to feel. Always the mask, smiling, mysterious, unintelligible, seductive, suggestive of all kinds of unrealised, and therefore of unexhausted pleasures; never the face beneath it, the face which frowns and weeps and shows everything, is unlovely, only just because it is known and must in due time even grow wrinkled and yellow. How agreeable the world would be if no one ever took off their masks or their gloves!’
CHAPTER XXVII.
On the following day as she returned from her drive, she was met, to her great surprise, by Napraxine, who descended the steps of the house with a face unusually pale, and a manner unusually grave.