'You ought to be ambitious,' she continued softly. 'I think you might achieve any eminence if you chose to seek it.'
'Surely I have enough blessings from fortune not to tempt it by that last infirmity?'
'You mean you have married a very rich aristocrat,' she said drily. 'Oh, yes; you have made one of the finest marriages in Europe; but that is not quite the same thing as "winning off your own hand." It is a lucky coup, like breaking the bank at roulette, but it cannot give you the same feeling that a successful soldier or a successful politician has, nor the same eminence. Indeed, I am not sure that your wife's possession of every possible good and great thing has not prevented you gathering laurels for yourself. You have dropped into a nest lined with rose-leaves; to have fallen on the rocks might have been better. Do you know,' she added, with a little smile, 'if I had been your wife I should have given you no rest until you had become the foremost man of the empire. I should not have cared about horses and peasants and children; but I should have loved you.'
He moved uneasily, conscious of the implied satire upon his wife, conscious also of a vibration of intense passion in the last words. He remained silent.
He knew well that had she been his wife, she would have been as false to him as she was false to Stefan Brancka. But the words sent a thrill through him half of emotion, half of repugnance. There was little light on the divan where she reclined, the dewy darkness of the garden was behind her; he could see the outlines of her form, the glister of rings on her hands, and jewels at her throat, the shine of her eyes watching him ardently.
His heart beat with a certain excitation; he vaguely felt that some hour of fate had come.
They were as utterly alone as though they had been in a desert; no one of her household would have ventured to approach that room without a summons from her. A little drummer in silver beat twelve strokes upon his drum, which was a clock. A nightingale was singing in the Cape jessamine beneath one of the casements. The light was low and soft, so faint that the moonbeams could be seen where they strayed over the cranes and lilies on the wall. She said to herself once more: 'Il faut brusquer la chose.' If she let him go now he would escape her for ever.
Ever and again there came to him the memory of his wife, but he shrank from it as he would have shrunk from seeing her in a gambling den. It seemed almost a profanity to remember her here. He longed to rise and get away, yet he desired to remain. He knew that every moment increased his danger, and yet he prolonged those moments with irresistible pleasure. Every gesture, glance, and breath of this woman was provocative and alluring, yet he thought as he felt her power always the same thing—'ihr seyd eine Teufelinne.' Willingly he would have embraced her and then killed her, that she might no more haunt him and do no more harm on earth.
As he sat with his face half averted from her she gazed at him with her burning, covetous eyes; the droop of his eyelids, the curves of his lips, the fairness of his features all seemed to her more beautiful than they had ever done; the very disquiet and coldness that were in them only allured her the more. She leaned nearer still and took his wrist in her fingers.
'Come to Noisettiers,' she murmured.