The combat had been less painful for Vera. Spared, by her ignorance and chastity, those desires of the flesh that burn like a brand, her love for Pierre, when she believed herself loved in return, was a long sweet dream, full of charming ecstasies and voluptuous tremors. She suspected that from this intimacy, from their exchange of tendernesses, the abandoning of herself at the fateful hour would follow; but she did not even blush at the thought. Full of confidence in the future, she awaited the great unknown, forgetful of all—her father, Russia, the past, and living in a sort of rapture that grew upon her more and more.
And it was at the time when she was in this frame of mind that Pierre Olsdorf came to tell her of their near return to St. Petersburg; that was, of the compulsory return to her former life, under the eyes of her family, perhaps far from the prince whom she would no longer see every day, almost every hour. At the words, the unhappy girl felt herself on the edge of an abyss, a terrible vertigo seized her upon looking into its depths, her face grew deathly pale, her eyes closed. If Pierre had not caught her in his arms she would have fallen like a stone to the ground.
The kisses of the prince, delighted and alarmed as he was at one and the same time, soon recalled the farmer's daughter to consciousness. His lips spoke such sweet words, laid to her lips, that they gave her full courage again, she trusted him so entirely; and the next day at the hour fixed by her master, she was ready to set out.
It was agreed that she should go alone with Yvan, at half past seven, to the Great Northern Railway Station, where the prince had reserved two compartments in the train, and that he would join them there.
While Pierre Olsdorf was making ready for his departure, Lise Barineff was hastening the preparations for her marriage with Paul. Knowing that the Russian law authorized her to marry, if she thought well, the very day after the decree of divorce, and being aware of the ill will of the Meyrins, she would scarcely suffer her lover to be a moment from her side; first because her love for him grew in proportion as obstacles were opposed to it, and next because she feared that Paul, whose feeble and wavering nature she knew, might escape her, yielding to the pressure brought to bear upon him by his family.
She had not hidden from the painter the oath the prince had sworn, to kill him if he did not become her husband; nor had she failed to tell him of the good position, monetarily, that her divorce left her in. Not only had the prince returned her dowry, eight thousand pounds, but he had left her his mansion in St. Petersburg, worth twelve thousand more. She could count on an income, therefore, of from eight hundred to a thousand pounds a year. She thought, as Paul did, that here was a fact that would plead in her favor with the Meyrins. When she was informed, at the same time as he who had been her husband, of the decision of the Holy Synod, she began to hope that the family in the Rue de Douai would come to have a better feeling toward her.
The artist himself thought so. Moreover, humiliated at being treated as a mere boy by his mother and sister-in-law, he had quite made up his mind to do without a consent that he would have to win, if indeed he were ever to get it, by too long a struggle; and he had given them to understand that he would not wait until the day of his marriage to leave them and set up housekeeping for himself. After dinner one evening, therefore, he told his mother very plainly that the Princess Olsdorf being divorced, he was going to marry her as speedily as possible.
At this news, though it was expected, the storm that had been gathering for several weeks in the Meyrin family burst forth violently. Mme. Frantz had repressed her feelings too long not to take a full revenge now.
Mme. Meyrin, who was completely under the domination of her daughter-in-law, only said to her son:
"I will never consent to your marrying a divorced woman, who is older than you and belongs to neither your rank nor your class."