She began to speak in a low, confused and broken voice, and Camille at first could not understand what she was saying. But at last he did so, and his soul was then divided between an immense pity for the grief that overwhelmed her, and a ferocious joy at the thought of the utter rout of his successful rival. Suddenly a step was heard on the garden path.
"Here he is," said Antoinette. "No, stay in here. I will call you if I want you. In spite of all I have said I shall never believe that he has deceived me unless I read the lie in his very eyes."
Instead of waiting for the visitor to be shown into her room, she ran out, and met him in the garden. He came up to her smiling, thinking that with the departure of Princess Gulof, all danger had vanished. But when he saw the white face and burning eyes of Antoinette, he guessed that she knew everything. He determined, however, to try and carry it off by sheer audacity.
"I am sorry I left so early last evening," he said, "but that mad Russian woman, whom I took into dinner, made me almost as crazy as she was herself. She ought to be in an asylum. But the night repaid me for all the worries of the evening. I dreamt of the Engadine, its emerald lakes, its pine-trees, and its edelweiss."
"I, too, had a dream last night," said Antoinette slowly. "I dreamt that this bracelet which you gave me belonged to the mad Russian woman, and that she had engraved her name inside it." She threw the bracelet at him. He picked it up, and turned it round and round in his trembling fingers, looking at the plate which had been forced open.
"Can you tell me what I ought to think of Samuel Brohl?" she asked.
The name fell on him like a mass of lead; he reeled under the blow; then, striking his head with his two fists, he answered:
"Samuel Brohl is a man worthy of your pity. If you only knew all that he has suffered, all he has dared to do, you could not help pitying him, yes, and admiring him. Samuel Brohl is an unfortunate ..."
"Scoundrel," she said in a terrible voice. "Madame Brohl!"--she began to laugh hysterically--"Madame Brohl! No, I can't become Madame Brohl. Ah! that poor Countess Larinski."
"You did not love the man," he said bitterly; "only the Count."