"And just to think that we have never come here before!" said Alicia. "You, at least, own magnificent gardens; but I, living in a villa which is simply a house with a few trees around it and has no other views than the opposite building, have been so stupid to have spent the afternoon in the Casino, dark and shut in like a wine cellar. How awful!"
She shuddered on thinking of the Casino. It seemed impossible to her now that during the very hours when this garden lay stretched out beside the sea, with its luminous sylvan splendor she should have been able to live in that half light of artificial illumination or in that nasty, unwholesome atmosphere.
"There are many beautiful things in the world," she continued, "for which money is not necessary. Just to think that if we had not lost we would not be here! It is almost better to be poor."
Michael laughed at her earnestness. No; it was not pleasant to be poor; but she was right in saying that to enjoy many beautiful things it was not necessary to have money.
"We, ourselves," she added, after a long pause, "have known each other only since we lost our wealth. Who knows but what if we had been born poor we would have understood each other better when we were young! I have often thought so."
Of course! And since Michael had been there on the bench, beside her, he had been thinking the same thing. Alicia's joy at the splendor of the afternoon, her enthusiasm on seeing this rustic garden overlooking the sea, far from certain people, without whom she formerly would have thought life intolerable, far from gambling, which was the only remedy to fill the emptiness of her life—all this flattered and delighted the Prince, like a discovery in harmony with his desires. At present he saw her in a very different light from that in which he had imagined her in former years. And he, too, surely seemed like a very different person in her eyes than he had in the past. Before, they had been separated by an enormous wall, wealth, that gave rise to pride and eagerness for domineering.
He felt the need of going on talking. Something was surging within him, causing words to rise to his lips in an irresistible tide.
A voice within seemed to warn him. "You are going to commit some monstrous folly. Look out!—You are on the road to mixing up your life again——" It was the old Lubimoff in him that was talking; the Lubimoff who had recently arrived from Paris to take refuge in his Ark, far from the vain longings that make up the happiness of the majority of men; it was the stern chief of the "enemies of women."
But the harsh, mournful inner voice awoke no echoing response. The Prince despised this phantom that still remained within him, lamenting over the ruins it found there.
Up to that moment he had been inhaling with delight the perfume of that woman. It seemed to mingle with the perfumes of the afternoon, communicating its essence to all Nature. He saw the sky, the sea, the trees, and everything in fact in terms of her, as though she filled all space.