That night she dined at one house and he dined at another; she went later to more than one ball, at which she showed herself for a brief hour of the cotillon and then took herself away, knowing that after her presence there all other women would pale and pall, as the stars fade, or seem to fade, when a meteor passes. She and Othmar had met that night at more than one house, and she had kept him beside her more openly and for a longer time than she had ever done before. It was her manner of reply to her husband’s suspicions and to the conjectures of the world.
Platon Napraxine returned home earlier than usual, and waited in a little smoking-room which opened on to the head of the staircase that he might hear her arrival, and see her once, if only as she passed up the stairs. It was only midnight when he went home, and he waited one, two, three, four hours; then he heard the carriage roll into the inner court and the door of the private entrance open. He left the fumoir and walked a few steps downward to meet her as she ascended the staircase. His heart thrilled as he saw her in her cloak, made of soft blush-coloured feathers, with her delicate head emerging from it as from some rose-tinted cloud. She herself perceived him waiting there with that involuntary irresistible sense of annoyance which was always her first emotion whenever she saw him anywhere.
She gave him a little careless smile, nodded a good-night, and would have gone onward, but he stopped her timidly.
‘Give me one of those,’ he said, as he touched the knot of tea-roses which were fastened at her breast.
‘What nonsense!’ she said impatiently, with much real irritation, as she mused, ‘If he play the lover, I shall not keep my patience!’
Her cloak parted and fell a little off one arm. His eyes dwelled passionately on the whiteness of her shoulder, with the great diamonds sparkling on it, and the jewelled butterflies trembling as though they took the blue veins for azure flowers.
With an obstinacy which he had never dared to show to her before he drew away one of the tea-roses.
‘Do not be angry,’ he murmured.
She shrugged her shoulders with sovereign indifference and contempt, and passed up the stairs.
He looked after her with dim longing eyes.