Nearly out of her mind, she rang and ordered her footman to go and ask M. Paul Meyrin to come to her at once.
Awaiting her lover, Lise Olsdorf took a rapid glance at the past, recalling with terror the road she had covered so rapidly within the last year. She saw again her youth, her court of adorers at St. Petersburg, her princely marriage, and the entertainments of which she had been the queen at Pampeln. She thought of her mother, whose ambitious edifices were going to come down crashing about her, and who would not be sparing of reproaches; and suddenly, too, thinking of her son whom she would never see again, she was about, perhaps, to exclaim, "No, never!" when Paul Meyrin came into the room hurriedly, without being announced.
The painter was pale, uneasy, and much agitated. His manly beauty only showed the more brilliantly. The princess was struck by it, and, suddenly reconquered by the sensual charm which mastered her, she sprung toward him.
Paul received her in his arms, bore her in them as if she had been a child, laid her on the couch, and, kneeling beside her, questioned her with his eyes.
"It is over," she said, after enjoying for a moment the intoxication of the contact with him, which took from her all energy. "Everything is over between the prince and me. He himself wishes it. I shall be your wife."
"My wife!" exclaimed Paul, with a movement of surprise.
"Yes, your wife. The prince and I are to be divorced, and I shall marry you. On this condition alone we shall not be separated. My husband has acted, too, like an honorable man. He gives me back my fortune, and leaves me the house at St. Petersburg, his wedding present. How happy we shall be! To live with you, never to leave you again! To love you freely, openly, in the face of the whole world—and always, always!"
The unhappy and bewitched woman would not look back on the past. In the artist's arms she forgot all—the memories that she had summoned a few minutes earlier, the high social rank she was about to quit, her mother, even her son.
Paul was calmer. This future, which he had by no means foreseen, the responsibility he was about to take upon himself, the new part he was called upon to play, all frightened him a little. Not that he did not love the woman who had given herself to him; but to marry, to become the head of a household, from a lover to change to a husband, the father of a family, it was a serious matter, deserving to be reflected on.
"Why don't you speak to me?" said the princess, vaguely uneasy and looking into the painter's eyes. "Are not you happy?"