'I know what you mean, dear mother; yes, I think so. To struggle for influence with another, and that other Olga! I should indeed despise myself if I could stoop so low. If he miss me he can follow me. If he do not—then he has no need of me.'
'I confess I do not understand you,' said Madame Ottilie; 'to surrender so meekly!'
'I surrender nothing,' she said, almost sternly. 'I know what I have seen again and again in society. The woman jealous and anxious, losing ground in his esteem and her own every hour, and rendering alike herself and him actors in a ludicrous comedy for the mockery of the world around them—a world which never has any sympathy for such a struggle. Indeed, why should it have? for if the jealousy of a lover be poetic, the jealousy of a wife is only ridiculous. I am his wife; I am not his gaoler. I refuse to admit to others or to him or to myself that any other could be wholly to him what I am; and I should lose that place I hold, lose it in his eyes and my own, if I once admitted my dethronement possible.'
She spoke with more force and anger than was common with her, and her auditor admired while she still failed to comprehend her.
'Is there a more pitiable spectacle,' she continued, 'than that of a wife contending with others for that charm in her husband's sight which no philtres and no prayers can renew when once it has fled for ever? Women are so unwise. Love is like a bird's song—beautiful and eloquent when heard in forest freedom, harsh and worthless in repetition when sung from behind prison bars. You cannot secure love by vigilance, by environment, by captivity. What use is it to keep the person of a man beside you, if his soul be truant from you? You all say that Olga Brancka has power over him. If she have, let her use it and exhaust it, it will not last long; but I will not sink to her level by contesting it with her. For what can you take me?'
In her glance the leonine wrath of the Szalras flashed for a moment; her face was pale, she paced the room with a hasty and uneven step. The Princess sought a timid refuge in silence There were certain heights in the nature and impulses of her niece of which she, a dweller on a lower plain, never caught sight. There were times when the haughty reserve and the admirable patience of this stronger character made a union which awed her, and altogether escaped her comprehension.
In two days' time she left Paris, the Princess and the children accompanying her.
He felt his heart misgive him as he let her go. What was Olga Brancka, what was Paris, what was all the world compared to her? As he kissed her hands in farewell before her servants at the Gare de l'Est, the impulse came over him to throw himself into the carriage beside her, and return with her to the old, fair, still, peaceful life of Hohenszalras. But he resisted it; he heard in memory the mocking of Olga Brancka's voice saying to him:
'Ah, quel mari amoureux!'
He had his establishment, his engagements, his horses, his friends, his wagers; he would seem ridiculous to all Paris if he could not endure a few weeks' separation from his wife. A great banquet at his house was arranged to take place in a few days' time, at which only great Legitimist nobles would be present, and at which the toast of 'Le Roi!' would be drunk with solemn honours. What would they say of him if he failed to receive them because he had followed his wife into Austria? With a thousand sophisms he reconciled himself to remaining there without her, and would not face the consciousness within him that the real motive of his staying on through the coming weeks in Paris was that Olga Brancka was there. For herself, she parted, with him tenderly, kindly, without any trace of doubt in him or of purpose in her departure.