“Do not be angry!—it was a stupid joke. Must one always be so serious with you? And—I am a little mad to-night, as I have told you. It is excusable.... Pray forgive me!—sit down again!”
She stretched out a little hand, its delicate fingers curling like tendrils. They touched his—his heart leaped as they clung. He sat down again. And the waltz, played by the master-hand, ebbed away, dying in waves of sensuous sweetness, and a Polish mazurka, after a peal of crescendo chords that shrieked with frantic merriment, sprang short-skirted and flourishing belled scarlet heels, from the bewitched instrument, to take its place. And Dunoisse, with throbbing senses, tore his eyes from the enthralling face, and raised them to meet the proud, voluptuous, defiant glance of the nun in the portrait. And her red lips seemed to say: “Why not?” He asked involuntarily:
“Who is she?”
Henriette’s soft voice answered, with a curious tone in it:
“Everyone who asks says ‘Who is she?’ as though she lived. But she died in 1743. The portrait used to hang over the fireplace in the Community Hall. I will not tell you how it comes to be where it is now—it is a secret. She who tramples upon those crowns and scepters was Louise Adelaide de Chartres, second daughter of the Regent Philippe d’Orléans. She became Abbess here when eighteen, and died Abbess of Chelles. She was divinely beautiful and of ungovernable passions.... The suite of immense rooms that were hers in the main building of the Abbaye are never used. They are always shut up, and no one ever goes into them alone.”
She added, with a strange laugh:
“It is considered dangerous, even in the daytime, to enter without a companion. The Sisters say that shrieks and the rattling of chains are heard there on certain nights in the year, and that the floors are found to be stained with new-shed blood. They think that her soul comes back there to expiate the acts of cruelty she perpetrated upon her nuns; and her terrible excesses, in frightful scourgings, and tortures such as cannot be conceived.”
Seeing Dunoisse’s look still fixed upon the portrait, she went on:
“She was a witch. She bewitched her lovers,—she has bewitched you—you cannot take away your eyes. Ah! if you do not recoil from the sight of her, knowing her to be so wicked, there should be hope for me! For I—oh!—how can I tell you?...”
She was weeping,—the shining tears were making their way between the fingers of the little hands she clasped over her eyes. Her white bosom heaved with sobs. And the mazurka, played by the mighty master, jerked and shrilled and leaped in spasms of frantic merriment, and men and women, intoxicated with pleasure and heated by wine, yielded themselves to the furious excitement of the dance. And Dunoisse was at the side of Henriette, pleading with her in a voice that shook with emotion, to be calmer!—and presently found himself possessed of one of the little hands. He won a glance, too, of eyes that shone out of a pale, tear-drenched face, like moss-agates seen through running water, and another by-and-by....