Olga Brancka now looked at him with some malice and with more admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds; and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as Court etiquette would permit. In her red gold curls she had some butterflies in jewels flashing all the colours of the rainbow and glowing like sunbeams. There was such a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her breasts, making their whiteness look like snow.
Instinctively Sabran glanced away from her. He felt an étourdissement that irritated him. The movement did not escape her. She took his arm.
'We will move about a little while,' she said. 'Let us talk of Wanda, mon beau cousin; since you can think of no one else. And so you are really going to Russia?'
'I believe so.'
'It will be a great sacrifice to her; any other woman would be in paradise in St. Petersburg, but she will be wretched.'
'I hope not; if I thought so I would not go.'
'You cannot but go now; you have made your choice. You will be happy enough. You will play again enormously, and Wanda has so much money that if you lose millions it will not ruin her.'
'I shall certainly not play with my wife's money. I have never played since my marriage.'
'For all that you will play in St. Petersburg. It is in the air. A saint could not help doing it, and you are not a saint by nature, though you have become one since marriage. But you know conversions by marriage do not last. They are like compulsory confessions. They mean nothing.'
'You are very malicious to-night, madame,' said Sabran, absently; he was in no mood for banter, and was disinclined to take up her challenge.