Was she wicked? Was anybody so? Was there ever anything in human nature beyond impatience, ennui, inquisitiveness, natural love of dominion, and wholly instinctive egotism? Did not these, collectively or singly, suffice to account for all human actions?
CHAPTER XLIII.
A few days later Nadine Napraxine was surprised and annoyed at receiving in the forenoon a request from her husband that she would be so good as to receive him for a few moments.
‘Beg the Prince to excuse me,’ she said to her women. ‘I am tired and must go out in an hour.’
Never once in the years of their marriage had Napraxine ever ventured to insist after such a message, or to revolt against her decisions. She was astonished and exceedingly irritated when they brought her a pencilled note in which were written some blurred words: ‘Pray pardon me, but I have urgent reasons to desire to see you without delay; I must entreat of you to admit me, if only for a moment.’
‘Quelle corvée!’ she murmured as she reluctantly gave the order to let him enter. The companionship of her husband, at all times wearisome to her, had become in the last few weeks more than usually intolerable.
‘I must beg of you not to send me these autocratic demands,’ she said, with much impatience, as he entered. ‘You want my women sent away? Why should they be sent away? What can you possibly have to say that may not be heard from the housetops?’
Looking at him with irritation and undisguised dislike, she saw an expression upon his face which was new there; he motioned the maids away with authority; he was disturbed and excited; he had nevertheless a certain dignity and anger in his attitude.