In the evening the two lovers dined together and went to the theater, leaving it arm in arm, without caring for the opinion of the public, which the writers of gossip for the newspapers had left in no doubt on the nature of their relations. It was a nine days' wonder, and then, as happens with these things at Paris, no more was said about it.
Still, notwithstanding all the indiscretions she was guilty of, the Princess Olsdorf was received as usual in the exclusive Russian set and the best Parisian drawing-rooms, where so plenary an indulgence reigns in matters of morality. This lasted a part of the winter, up to the time when it was no longer possible for her to hide the state she was in.
She was then obliged to give up going into society, and as a consequence she was more and more at the Meyrins', where she had made the acquaintance of the charming Mme. Daubrel, whose whole life Paul had told her.
Mme. Daubrel did not doubt that between the princess and the painter there was a closer tie than the Mmes. Meyrin affected to suppose; but as she recalled the time when she, too, an adulterous wife, had had so much to dread, she felt a deep sympathy for the noble foreigner, who, in return, showed her sincere affection.
It was this affection, as well as the lonely life that her state forced her to live, that led Lise Olsdorf to tell all to the young woman, who replied, after hearing the tale:
"Alas, I have not the right to blame you. My past forbids me; but may God spare you the punishment I have suffered for my fault. A judicial separation has branded me—that was only just; but, more than that, I shall never see my son again, and I am abandoned by the man who made me forget my duty. As for that, I should have left him, for, living with him, I learned too late how worthy my husband was of my love. If I had not had my mother to devote myself to, I should have killed myself or gone into a convent."
"Ah, you did not love as I love," Lise said, interrupting her, "you were not loved as I am. I know your story. Your seducer was a dreamer, as it were—a man without genius or future. You fell through inexperience, curiosity of the soul, rather than through love. You were little more than a child. I was a woman when I gave myself to Paul. My heart and my senses awaited him in the solitude, in the blank that my husband made about me—a cold, austere, and passionless man, who had never been able to understand or love me."
"But the future—the future!"
"It will be what circumstances may make it; like yours, perhaps, save for the abandon of the man I love. I shall make a great artist of Paul. He will owe everything to me—his reputation, his genius, his success."
"One day or other your husband will require you to return to Russia. You will be forced then to separate from Monsieur Meyrin."