"I must go and speak to Andryana," said Madame de Carlsberg. "I know the Prince too well not to be sure that his good temper hides some cruel vengeance. He must have found some way of embroiling Florence with Verdier.—Good-by for the present.—And don't be cast down over the misery of your friend's married life.—I assure you there are worse."
As she spoke, she gently waved a big fan of white feathers. The perfume she preferred, the perfume that the young man associated with the sweetest emotions, was waved abroad by the feathers. She gently bowed as a sign of farewell, and her soft brown eyes closed with the tender look of intelligence that falls upon a lover's heart like an invisible kiss.
But at that moment Pierre was unable to feel its sweetness. Again he had experienced, in the presence of the Archduke, the pain that is one of the frightful penalties of adultery; to see the beloved one ill-treated by the man who has the right because he is the husband, see it, and to be unable to defend her. He watched her going away now with the bearing of a beautiful, graceful queen, so proudly regal in her costume of pink moiré shot with silver. Upon the beloved visage which he saw in profile as she crossed the room, he discerned traces of profound melancholy, and again he pitied her with all his heart for the bitterness of her married life. He never dreamt that the Archduke's sarcasm left Madame de Carlsberg completely indifferent, nor that the relations of Miss Marsh and Verdier did not interest her sufficiently to cause such a complete feeling of depression. No. It was this idea that was weighing upon the mind of the young woman, that was lying upon her heart like lead in the midst of the fête: "Olivier is unhappily married! He is miserable. He has not gained that gentleness of heart that he would have done had he loved his wife.—He is still the same.—So he hates me yet.—It was enough for him to learn that Pierre was to pass the evening with me for him to try to prevent him from coming here.—And yet he does not know all.—When he does!"
And hoping against hope, she forced herself to think, to say, to repeat: "Well! When he does know he will see that I am sincere; that I have not made his friend unhappy; that I never will make him suffer."
It was also Pierre who awoke her from the second illusion that Olivier would be touched by the truth and purity of her love. Three days passed after the soirée, during which the young man did not see his mistress. Cruel as were these separations, Ely judged it wisest to prolong them during Du Prat's stay. She hoped to make up for it later; for she counted upon passing the long weeks of April and May at Cannes with Hautefeuille, weeks that were so mild, so covered with flowers, so lonely upon the coast and among the deserted gardens. The idea of making a voyage to Italy, where they could meet, as they had done at Genoa, in surroundings full of charm, also haunted her. The prospect of certain happiness, if she could escape from the danger menacing her, gave her strength to support the insupportable; an absence that contained all the possibilities of presence, the torture of so great a love, of being so near and yet not seeing each other.
It was the one way, she believed, of preventing suspicion from awakening in Olivier. After these three weary days of longing, she appointed a meeting with Pierre one afternoon in the garden of the Villa Ellenrock, which recalled to both an hour of exquisite happiness. While her carriage rolled toward the Cap d'Antibes, she looked out upon the foliage of the climbing roses, peering over the coping of the walls, the branches, already long and full of leaves, falling under their heavy load, instead of standing out strong and boldly, and casting heavy, deep shadows. A conflagration of full-blown roses blazed upon the branches. At the foot of the silvery olive trees, a thick growth of young wheat covered the loose soil of the fields. All these were the visible signs that the year had passed from winter to springtide in the three weeks. And a shudder of melancholy shot through the young woman at the sight. It was as though she felt the time slipping away, bearing her happiness with it. In spite of a sky, daily warmer and of a softer azure; in spite of the blue sea, of the odors permeating the soft, balmy air; in spite of the fascination of the flowers, blooming all around, as she strolled down the alleys, still bordered with cinerarias, anemones, and pansies, she felt that her heart was not as light as when she had flown to the last rendezvous. She perceived Hautefeuille, in profile, awaiting her under the branches of the big pine, at the foot of which they had rested. She felt at the first glance that he was no longer the lover of that time, enraptured with an ecstatic, perfect joy, and without a hidden thought. It seemed as though a shade hovered before his eyes and enveloped his thoughts. It could not be that he was vexed with her. It could not be that his friend had revealed the dreaded secret. And yet Pierre was troubled about Olivier. He admitted it at once before Ely had time to question him.
"I cannot think," he said, "what has come between us. I have the strange impression that certain things in me irritate him, unnerve him, displease him.—He is vexed with me about trifles that he would not even have noticed formerly; as, for example, my friendship with Corancez. Would you believe it? He reproached me yesterday for having witnessed the ceremony at Genoa, as though it were a crime.—And all because we met poor Marius and his wife in the train at Golfe Juan yesterday!
"'Our nest is built there,' Corancez said to me, adding—these were his very words—that 'the bomb was going to explode,' meaning that Andryana was going to speak to her brother.—I told the story to Olivier to amuse him, and he flew into a temper, going so far as to talk of its being 'blackmail,' as though one could blackmail that abominable creature Navagero!—I replied to him, and he answered me.—You cannot imagine in what terms he spoke to me about myself, about the danger that I ran in frequenting the society of this place, of the unhappiness my change of tastes and ideas gave him.—He could not have talked more seriously had Cannes been tenanted by a gang of thieves who wished to enroll me in their ranks.—It is inexplicable, but the fact remains. He is pained, wounded, uneasy because I am happy here. Can you understand such madness in a friend whom I love so sincerely, who loves me so tenderly?"
"That is the very reason why you must not feel angry," replied Ely. "When one suffers, one is unjust. And he is unhappy in his married life. It is so hard to have made a mistake in that way."
She spoke in this way, prompted by a natural jealousy. Her passionate, ungovernable nature was too proud, too noble to employ the method of secretly poisoning the mind of husband or lover against friendships that are disliked, a method that wives and mistresses exercise with a sure and criminal knowledge. But to herself she said:—