"Yes. Well on what day? Ah, there is a good chance for us to make acquaintance. The Countess Waranzoff will be giving almost immediately a musical matinée for the benefit of the wounded in the last campaign in the Caucasus. I will see her this evening, and ask her to send for your brother to help her."
"Excellent. That will put you at once into my sister-in-law's good books."
On the next day but one, in fact, after having received and accepted the proposition of the Countess Waranzoff, Frantz came with his wife to thank Lise Olsdorf, whose greeting of them was so gracious that they returned home charmed with the great Russian lady.
Two days later the adroit princess returned the visit, and, as she had promised Paul, she won his sister-in-law's heart completely by paying her a thousand compliments about Nadeje. A few days afterward she took the child in her carriage to the Bois and brought her back home loaded with toys and having a pretty gold necklet about her throat. Then she invited the Meyrins to dinner, took them to her box at the opera, and a week had not passed before the conquest of the family was made.
An excellent pianist, Lise Olsdorf begged Frantz to come and play with her twice a week, and she presented him in the Russian colony, where concerts were often given at which the executants were paid on a high scale.
All this flattered the Meyrins, and was profitable to them besides. Therefore Mme. Frantz was careful not to seek to know more than she was told of the relations between the princess and her brother-in-law. Lise Olsdorf's end was gained.
In acting thus the daughter of the Countess Barineff only yielded to the feeling which moves most devoted and truly loving women to become intimate with the family of the man dear to them. It seems to them that in not remaining strangers to the ordinary life of their lover, or his business, or his work, they are something better and more than his mistress. It is a sort of consecration or rehabilitation for them. They feel less degraded, less alone, and armed so to speak, with a right.
Their affection grows the more inasmuch as they can thus, as legitimate companions, share the sorrows and joys of the man who esteems them so far as not to make of them mere instruments of pleasure. They become in a sense morganatic wives, lacking only the name, and often not deserving less respect than if they had it.
It soon came to pass that not a week went by without the princess receiving the Meyrins or being invited by them. She always came with hands full, seizing the slightest occasions, saints' days or anniversaries, to make presents to all the members of the family.
As for Paul, she saw him every day: to begin with, in his studio, where she posed for the picture in which she was painted half naked, as Diana the huntress—a picture which promised to be one of the artist's best, though the sittings were often suddenly interrupted and put off to the following day.