‘Let us leave metaphor,’ she continued, after a pause; ‘I know you believe in something like the Greek Erinnys; but you may believe me that there is nothing of the kind. We all make our own fates, or our temperaments make them for us. Destiny does not stalk about amongst us unseen, but irresistible, as I know you think it does. I believe there is nothing which befalls us, from a catarrh to a catastrophe, which, if we choose to be honest with ourselves, we may not trace to our own imprudence.’
‘You cannot judge; you have never——’
‘Never had a cold? Oh, indeed I have. If you were to listen to de Thiviers, I am a person on whom the most southerly wind should never be allowed to blow, for fear of its blowing through me and annihilating me; as for catastrophe——’
She paused a moment; across even her profound indifference there passed the memories of some dead men.
‘Catastrophes,’ added Othmar; ‘catastrophes have not been lacking in the pageant of your life, madame; but I believe they have only been the shipwrecks seen through the windows of rose-glass.’
She was silent. Then she said slowly and in a low voice:
‘You mistake if you think that I did not feel pain for the death of Seliedoff.’
Othmar bent his head. She saw that he did not believe her. The sense of being misjudged banished her momentarily chastened mood.
‘But I was at the same time very much annoyed,’ she continued. ‘Tragedy always annoys me. It sets the asses of the world braying. No one ever pleases me by irrational or exaggerated actions. I am sorry, of course, but I cannot forgive the uproar which all conduct of—of that sort causes me. It always irritates me like the conflagration in the cantata of the ‘Dernière Nuit de Sardanapale,’ where the grosse caisse always roars and rolls so loud that all the music is lost, and one does not feel to care in the very least who may die or who may live.’
Then she rose and gave him a little smile.