'What I ever must regret is not to be worthy of you!' he murmured; and the subterfuge was also a truth.
She looked down at him wistfully with doubt and confusion mingled. She sighed, for she understood that buried in his heart there was some pain he would not share, perchance some half involuntary unfaithfulness he did not dare confess. She thrust this latter thought away quickly; it hurt her as the touch of a hot iron hurts tender flesh; she would not harbour it. It might well be, she knew.
She was silent some little time, then she said calmly:
'I think you worthy. Is not that enough? Never say to me what you do not wish to say. But——but——if there be anything you believe that I should blame, be sure of this, love: I am no fair weather friend. Try me in deep water, in dark storm!'
And still he did not speak.
His evil angel held him back and said to him, 'Nay! she would never forgive.'
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
One day in this winter time she sat alone in her octagon-room whilst he was out driving in the teeth of a strong wind blowing from the north and frequent bursts of snowstorm. Rapid exercise, eager movements, were necessary to him at once as tonic and as anodyne, and the northern blood that was in him made the bitter cold, the keen and angry air, the conflict with the frantic horses tearing at their curbs welcome and wholesome to him. Paul Zabaroff had many a day driven so over the hard snows of Russian plains.
She sat at home as the twilight drew on, her feet buried in the furs before her chair, the fragrance shed about her from a basket of forced narcissus and bowls full of orange flowers and of violets, the light of the burning wood shining on the variegated and mellow hues of the tiles of the hearth. The last poems of Coppée were on her lap, but her thoughts had wandered away from those to Sabran, to her children, to a thousand happy trifles connected with one or the other. She was dreaming idly in that vague reverie which suits the last hour of the reclining day in the grey still winter of a mountain-land. She was almost sorry when Hubert entered and brought her the mail-bag, which had just come through the gloomy defiles and the frosted woods which stretched between them and Matrey.