He sprung up again with a frown, and muttered:
"But the other one! What shall I tell her this evening? Bah, I shall find some way of calming her."
The princess herself was to save her lover the trouble of finding this way, for when he joined her at dinner and was very embarrassed, fearing some reproach, she said, tenderly:
"One word only, dear, about the meeting I had in your studio this morning. Swear that this girl is nothing to you—that you will never receive or see her again; it is all I require of you."
"I swear it," said the painter, glad to get off so cheaply.
"Don't you feel," continued the young woman, "as I do, that there must not be the shadow of a cloud between us, not the faintest suspicion? Your past does not concern me; but your present is mine—wholly mine, is not it?"
"Wholly," repeated he, drawing her to his heart.
Two hours later the artist, having the princess on his arm, was mounting the grand staircase at the opera and taking his seat in their box.
Sarah had plainly not wasted the afternoon, for at once twenty opera-glasses were leveled at them; the name of the great Russian lady was whispered from stall to stall; and next day two or three of the morning papers recorded in their notices of the theaters that among the leaders of fashion present at the opera on the previous evening had been noticed the beautiful Princess Olsdorf, accompanied by her painter in ordinary, Paul Meyrin.
But these notices, between the lines of which it was so easy to read, did not trouble the noble stranger an instant. Determined to make no concession to public opinion, infatuated by her passion, she began with him she loved the life apart that she had dreamed of.