'What beasts we are!' he thought, as he left Damn's at the flush of dawn, after a supper there which he had given, and which had nearly degenerated into an orgie. 'Yet is it unfaithfulness to her? My soul is always hers and my love.'
Still his conscience smote him, and he felt ashamed as he thought of her proud frank eyes, of her noble trust in him, of her pure and lofty life led there under the show summits of her hills.
He worshipped her, with all his life he worshipped her; a moment's caprice, a mere fume and fever of senses surprised and astray, were not infidelity to her. So he told himself, with such sophisms as men most use when most they are at fault, as he walked home in the rose of the daybreak to her great palace, which like all else of hers was his.
As he ascended the grand staircase, with the escutcheon of the Szalras repeated on the gilded bronze of its balustrade, a chill and a depression stole upon him. He loved her with intensity and ardour and truth, yet he had been disloyal to her; he had forgotten her, he had been unworthy of her. What worth were all the women in the world beside her? What did they seem to him now, those Delilahs who had beguiled him? He loathed the memory of them; he wondered at himself. He went through the great house slowly towards his own rooms, pausing now and then, as though he had never seen them before, to glance at some portrait, some stand of arms, some banner commemorative of battle, some quiver, bow, and pussikan taken from the Turk.
On his table he found a telegram sent from Lienz:
'I am so glad you are amused and happy. We are all well here.
(Signed) 'WANDA.'
No torrents of rebuke, no scenes of rage, no passion of reproaches could have carried reproach to him like those simple words of trustful affection.
'An angel of God should have descended to be worthy her!' he thought.
The next evening there was a ball at the Hof. It was later in the season than such things were usually, but the visit to the court of the sovereign of a neighbouring nation had detained their majesties and the nobility in Vienna. The ball was accompanied by all that pomp and magnificence which characterise such festivities, and Sabran, present at it, was the object of universal congratulation and much observation, as the ambassador-designate to Russia.