'You are an elaborate production of the laboratory,' said the Princess, calmly. 'I am sure you will admit yourself that nature has had very little to do with you.'
'My pearls are black by a freak of nature,' said Madame Olga. 'Perhaps I am the same.'
The Princess made a little gesture signifying that politeness forbade her from assent, but she thought: 'Yes; you were never a white pearl, but you have steeped yourself in acids and solutions of all degrees of poison till you are darker than you need have been, and you think your darkness light, and some men think so too.'
Sabran had grown to look for that necklace of black pearls with eagerness in the society to which they both belonged. Few evenings found him where Madame Brancka was not. She had known his Paris of the Second Empire; she had known Compiègne and Pierrefonds as he had known them; she knew all the friendships and the bywords of his old life, and all the dessous des cartes of that which was now around them. She amused him. She comprehended all he said, half uttered. She remembered all he recalled. At Hohenszalras he had not found any charm in this, but here he did find one. She suited Paris; she knew it profoundly, she liked all its pastimes, she understood all its sports and all its slang. She hunted at Chantilly, betted at La Marche, plunged at baccara, shot and fenced well and gaily, had the theatres and all their jargon at her fingers' ends; all this made her no mean aspirant to the post of mistress of his thoughts. All which had seemed tiresome, artificial, even ridiculous, amidst the grand forests and healthful air of the Iselthal became in Paris agreeable and even bewitching. Once he said almost angrily to his wife:
'You, who ride so superbly, should surely show yourself at the Duc's hunts. What is the use of long gallops in the Bois before anyone else is out of bed?'
'I never rode for show yet,' said Wanda, in surprise. 'And you know I never would join in any sort of chase.'
'Surely such humanitarianism is exaggeration,' he said impatiently. 'Olga Brancka rides every day they meet at Chantilly, and she is by no means of your form in the saddle.'
'I have never yet imitated Olga,' said his wife, a little coldly; but she did not object when day after day her finest horses were lent to Madame Brancka. She never by a word or a hint reminded him that he was not absolute master of all which belonged to her. Only when her sister-in-law wanted to take Bela and his pony to Chantilly, she made her will strongly felt in refusal.
The child, whose fancy had been fired by what he had heard of the ducal hunting, of the great hounds and the stately gatherings, like pictures of the Valois time, was passionately angered at being forbidden to go, and made his mother's heart ache with his flashing eyes and his flaming cheeks. 'Cannot she leave even the children alone?' she thought, with more bitterness than she had ever felt against anyone.
A few nights later they were both at the Grand Opéra, in the box which was allotted to the name of the Countess von Szalras. She was herself not very well; she was pale, she sat a little away from the light. Her gown was of white velvet; she had no ornament except a cluster of gardenias and stephanotis, and her habitual necklace of pearls. Olga Brancka, in a costume of many shaded reds, marvellously embroidered in gold cords, was as gorgeous as a tropical bird, and sat with her arms upon the front of the box, playing with a fan of red feathers, or looking through her glass round the house. He talked most with her, but he looked most at his wife. There was no woman, in a full and brilliant house, who could compare with her. A thrill of the pride of possession passed through him. The malicious eyes of the other, glancing towards him over her shoulder, read his thoughts. She smiled provokingly.