'No, she would never have said so. She is like the Sioux, the Stoics, and the people who died in lace ruffles in '89. I beg your pardon, those are your people, I forgot; the people whose ghosts forbid you to entertain us at Romaris.'
'I would brave an army of ghosts to please Madame Brancka,' said Sabran, with his usual gallantry.
'Call me Cousinette, at the least,' she murmured, as they descended the last stair.
'Bon soir, madame!' he said, as he closed the door of her carriage.
'Are you coming with me?' said Wanda, as she went to hers.
He hesitated. 'I think I will go for an hour to the clubs,' he answered. He kissed her hand. As he drew the fur rug over her skirts, she thought his face was very pale as she saw it by the lamplight. She wished to ask him if he were quite well, but she restrained herself, knowing how intolerable such importunities are to men. Instead, she smiled at him, as she said, 'Amusez-vous bien,' and left him to divert himself as he chose.
'How little women understand men, and how poorly they love them when they do not leave them alone!' she thought, as her carriage rolled homeward. She never troubled him, never interrogated him, never even tried to conjecture what he did when away from her. Sometimes, when he returned at sunrise, she had already risen, and had said a prayer with her children, written her letters, or visited her horses, but she always met him with a smile and without a question.
It hurt her with an ever-deepening wound to perceive the attraction which Olga Brancka possessed for him. She did not for a moment believe that it was love, but she saw that it was an influence which had audacity enough to compete with her own, a sort, of fascination which, commencing with dislike, increased to an unhealthy and morbid potency. She could not bring herself to speak of it to him. She was not one of those women who reproach and implore. It would have seemed to her as if both he and she would have lost all dignity in each other's sight if once they had stooped to what society calls jestingly 'a scene.' He guessed aright that if she had really believed herself displaced in his heart she would have left him without a word. She was too conscious of his entire worship of her to be moved to anything like that jealous passion which would have seemed to her the last depths of humiliation; but she was pained, fretted, stirred to a scornful wonder by the power this frivolous woman possessed of usurping his time and giving colour to his thoughts.
It hurt her to think he feared her too much to tell her of any trouble, any folly, any memory. She reproached herself with having perhaps alienated his confidence by the gravity of her temper, the seriousness of her opinions. It would be hard to think that frivolous shallow women could inspire men with more confidence than a deeper nature could do, but perhaps it might be so. He had sometimes said to her, half jestingly: 'You should dwell among the angels; the human world is unfit for you!' Was it that which alarmed him?
With that subtle sense of what is in the air around which so often makes us aware of what is never spoken in our hearing, she was sensible that the great world in which they lived began to speak of the intimacy between her husband and the wife of her cousin Stefan. She became sensible that the world was in general disposed to resent for her, to pity her, and to censure them, whilst it coupled their names together. The very suspicion brought her an intolerable shame. When she was quite alone, thinking of it, her face burned with angry blushes. No one hinted it to her, no one breathed it to her, no one even expressed it by a glance in her presence; yet she was as well aware of what they were saying as though she had been in a hundred salons when they talked of her.