He shrank a little, with almost a sense of guiltiness, as a little tap came on the panels of the library door, and from behind the tapestry the fair head of his young wife peeped cautiously.
‘May I come in?’ she asked, as a child might have done.
He rose with instinctive courtesy and opened the door to her.
It was noonday, and her few hours of sleep had sufficed to banish all her fatigue, and to make her as fresh, as radiant, and as clear-eyed, as she had been in the summer woods of Amyôt. She had none of the languor which late hours cause in later years; she had slept as soundly as a young fawn tired with its play, and had awakened as refreshed as a flower that uncloses at sunrise. She wore a long loose gown of palest blue, opening a little at the throat, with much old lace, of which the yellow tinge made whiter still the whiteness of her skin. The gown was of satin, and had gleams and shadows in it as she moved. Her eyes smiled; her cheeks were flushed from her bath; her entrance had a childish eagerness.
‘Do tell me again that I did well last night,’ she said, with a child’s longing for the recapitulation of its innocent triumphs.
He did not look at her as he drew her to him with a mechanical caress.
‘You did perfectly,’ he answered, absently. ‘A great ball is a woman’s Austerlitz, I suppose. Do not let it make you in love with the world.’
‘One cannot but like it,’ she said, with her habitual truthfulness, a little wistfully. ‘That is what I thought last night; perhaps it is wrong—when so many suffer——’
‘They would not suffer a whit less if you did not give a ball.’
She hesitated, being still shy with him, and afraid of that which she had never seen, but which she always dreaded, his displeasure.