'I do not think I can leave Paris immediately,' he said, with hesitation. 'I have many engagements. Of course you can send the children.'
'I said I should go, not you. I long to see my own woods in their first leaf,' she answered, with a smile. 'It will be better for you to remain. No one ought to be allowed to suppose that you are bound to my side. That is neither for your dignity nor mine.'
'Has anyone suggested——' he began, and paused in embarrassment, for he remembered the incessant taunts and innuendoes of Olga Brancka.
'I do not listen to suggestions of that sort,' she replied tranquilly. 'You wish to remain here, and I wish to return home. We are both at liberty to do what we like. My love, she added, with a grave tenderness in her voice, 'have I so poor an opinion of you that I dare not leave you alone? I think I should hardly care for a fealty which was only to be retained by my constant presence. That is not my ideal.'
He coloured; he was uncertain what to reply: before her he felt unworthy and disloyal. A vast sense of her immeasurable nobility swept over him, and made him conscious of his own unworthiness.
'Whatever you wish, I wish,' he murmured, and was aware that this could not be what she would gladly have heard him say. 'I will follow you soon. Your heart is always in your highlands. I know that you are too grand a creature to be happy in cities. I have the baser leaven in me that is not above them. The forests and the mountains do not say to me all that they do to you.'
'Men want the movement of the world, no doubt,' she said, without showing any trace of disappointment. 'I only care for the subjective life; I am very German, you see. The woods interest me, and the world does not.'
No more passed between them on the subject, but she gave orders to her people to make arrangements for her departure and her children's in two days' time, and sent out her cards of farewell.
'Do you think you are wise?' the Princess ventured to say to her.
She answered: