"You must be amused at me. What a change from the Alicia of former times! I'm not so bad as I seem, that much is certain, isn't it? Tell me you don't think I'm so bad; tell me you think I'm only mad; mad, and always unlucky."
She opened the rooms downstairs to show how orderly they looked, but the chill of the deserted drawing room, the covers on the furniture, and the musty odor, like that of a damp cellar, prompted them to go out into the garden and, like two people prolonging their farewell, continue their conversation at the foot of the stairway.
The elderly maid of the Duchess, and the gardener's wife who looked after the cooking, passed them repeatedly on various pretexts. They bowed to the gentleman, with a look of adoration and a pleasant smile. They seemed to be saying to themselves: "That nice fellow is Prince Lubimoff, the one that's so much talked about." They had often heard his name in Villa Rosa, and they both venerated him as a providential being who could restore the vanished days of abundance with a mere wave of the hand.
Michael thought it best not to prolong his visit.
"Come and see me," she said in a low voice, as she accompanied him out to the gate. "Now you know everything. You're the only one who does. It will seem very sweet to me to talk with you, and have you console and help me."
The Prince spent the next few hours, pensive and silent. So many new things had come up all at once! First there had been the revelation of a son, whose existence he never could have imagined; next, the untamable creature of love changed into a mother; her tears, her silent suffering, which she was bearing, like a convict's chain, in expiation of her mad past. And the crowning surprise of all had been what he had felt within himself, the resurrection of his former being, his new surrender to the domination of the flesh, and the double lashing his nervous system had received in breathing the perfume of the soft linen and feeling the imprint of her lips on his brow.
This latter he wished to forget, and to succeed in doing so he concentrated all his attention on the revelations she had made, and on her maternal sorrows. Poor Alicia! Finding her impoverished and tearful, with no other help than that which he might give, he began to feel a lasting affection for her. It was the affection of the strong for the weak; a paternal love which did not take into account the similarity in their ages, nor the difference of sex; a tenderness made up for the most part of a certain sweet pity. He was moved by the memory of the humble kiss with which she had caressed his hands. It was the kiss, almost of a beggar. Unhappy woman! This was enough to make him feel obliged never to abandon her.
Alicia's pride, her desire to dominate, had formerly irritated him. Accustomed to protecting women generously without ever submitting to their will, considering them in the light of something agreeable and inferior, he could not compromise with her haughty character. They were both people too strong and domineering to be able to tolerate each other. But now everything was changed.
He remembered her as he had seen her in the bedroom, sorrowful, weeping, with pearls hanging from the corners of her eyes, which were tragically beautiful, as in the images of the Virgin, where Mary is holding the body of the crucified Christ on her knees. Mater Dolorosa!
But there seemed to be another person within the Prince protesting with cold, clear-sightedness against this image. No, she was not the Mother of Sorrows. A mother never abandons her son. She renounces all of the vanities of this world for him. She gives up her present and her future, as though she had no other life than that of her son, part of her own flesh. At all hours she gives him the milk of her breast. Moment by moment she follows his development, fighting with illness, laughing at danger. To love him she does not have to wait for him to grow to the full splendor of adolescence. Whereas she...!