"Our plan would have been easier to carry out,—had M. de Bayard been more—complaisant."
She rose up, her beautiful face livid and gray under its artificial roses. Her eyebrows writhed like little live snakes, her eyes burned like wind-blown torches. She spoke, looking past her confederate in the chair, and with a voice he barely recognized:
"His mother must have prayed her Saints for this," she said, "that I should always fail in the moment when triumph seemed most sure. Max Valverden would have married me—it is absolutely certain!—had not Fate sent him back on leave from the Staff in Austria but a couple of hours too soon. Weak, sentimental Max! always threatening extreme measures. Who would have believed him capable of carrying out that menace so often reiterated! But this I know. Had he confronted me with what his letter termed 'the unmistakable proofs of my appalling treachery,' I would have convinced him even against the testimony of his own ears and eyes. But De Bayard—but my husband!——"
She had forgotten Straz; she saw nothing but her own frustrated ambitions, the dead body of the man whose suicide had robbed her of a title, and the living husband whose stern rejection of her overtures had left her forever outside the social pale....
"Do I not know the man he is! With another it would have been so easy. He would have granted an interview,—I would have been suppliant and humble—I would have told my tale in such a voice! ... You were away.... I was young and inexperienced.... I foolishly yielded to the persuasions of another.... Once I had let Valverden kiss me I felt myself smirched for ever. I fled with him because I dared not meet your eyes!"
Straz sniggered. She went on, not hearing him....
"He would have taken me to his heart again. Once reinstated there I would have regained the entrée to Society. For a woman who has lived within the pale—even if she finds it better fun outside—it is hideous to be déclassée. A few triumphs,—a little intriguing—and I should have been received at Court.... For the Emperor is above all a man of the world; and the Empress loves to surround herself with beautiful and witty women. With gifts, talents, charm like mine, I should have carried all before me!—I should have reigned—I should have drunk the wine of Success from a goblet of diamond."
"Without doubt," agreed Straz, "had M. le Colonel consented to receive you. Yet I contend, his refusal is a hopeful sign, if it means that he is afraid."
She winced as though he had thrust a knife in her side, and cried out:
"Afraid! You do not know him.... No!—I tell you, that it is to him as though I had never existed.... Did we meet, he would look me in the face—pass me by without the twitch of a muscle—without the flicker of a glance.... But you have shown me how I may reach his heart—and one day I shall thrust my hand into his breast and tear it out and trample on it.... It is she—my daughter—who will accomplish this!..."