'He is a favourite of Aunt Ottilie's,' she explained to him as, leaving Sabran, they passed down the corridor. 'Did I not tell you? He had an accident on the Umbal glacier last summer, and in his convalescence we saw him often.'
'I recollect that your aunt asked me about him. Excuse me; I had quite forgotten,' said the ambassador, understanding now why she had wanted to go to the Chamber.
The next day Sabran called upon her. There were with her three or four great ladies. He did not stay long, and was never alone with her. She felt an impatience of her friends' presence, which irritated her as it awoke in her. He sent her a second basket of white lilac in the following forenoon. She saw no more of him.
She found herself wondering about the manner of his life. She did not even know in what street he lived; she passed almost all her time with the Queen of Natalia, who did not know him, and was still so unwell that she received no one.
She was irritated with herself because it compromised her consistency to desire to stay on in Paris, and she did so desire; and she was one of those to whom a consciousness of their own consistency is absolutely necessary as a qualification for self-respect. There are natures that fly contentedly from caprice to caprice, as humming-birds from blossom to bud; but if she had once become changeable she would have become contemptible to herself, she would hardly have been herself any longer. With some anger at her own inclinations she resisted them, and when her self-allotted fifteen days were over, she did not prolong them by so much as a dozen hours. There was an impatience in her which was wholly strange to her serene and even temper. She felt a vague dissatisfaction with herself; she had been scarcely generous, scarcely cordial to him; she failed to approve her own conduct, and yet she scarcely saw where she had been at fault.
The Kaulnitz and many other high persons were at the station in the chill, snowy, misty day to say their last farewells. She was wrapped in silver-fox fur from head to foot; she was somewhat pale; she felt an absurd reluctance to go away from a city which was nothing to her. But her exiled friend was recovering health, and Madame Ottilie was all alone; and though she was utterly her own mistress, far more so than most women, there were some things she could not do. To stay on in Paris seemed to her to be one of them.
The little knot of high personages said their last words; the train began slowly to move upon its way; a hand passed through the window of the carriage and laid a bouquet of lilies of the valley on her knee.
'Adieu!' said Sabran very gently, as his eyes met hers once more.
Then the express train rolled faster on its road, and passed out by the north-east, and in a few moments had left Paris far behind it.