'Which are you?'
'Neither; only a woman who loves the home she was born in, and the people she——'
'Reigns over,' added the Princess. 'Admit, my beloved, that a part of your passion for Hohenszalras comes of the fact that you cannot be quite as omnipotent in the world as you are here!'
Wanda von Szalras smiled. 'Perhaps; the best motive is always mixed with a baser. But I adore the country and country life. I abhor cities.'
'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural life, but they remain for all that with Augustus.'
At that moment they heard the hoofs of his horse galloping up the great avenue. A quarter of an hour went by, for he changed his dress before coming into his wife's presence. He would no more have gone to her with the dust or the mud of the roads upon him than he would have gone in such disarray into the inner circle of the Kaiserin.
When he entered, she did not speak, but the Princess Ottilie said with vivacity:
'Well! you accept, of course?
'I will neither accept nor decline. I will do what Wanda wishes.'
The Princess gave an impatient movement of her little foot on the carpet.