"Enough said. I came here to return your money. You refuse to take it? You refuse? Very well, I will find a way to make you. Good night, Michael!"
As a matter of fact, night had fallen, and the Prince saw her disappear in the shadows of the street whence she had come: a street dimly lighted by a single blue street lamp.
For a moment, he thought of heading her off, humble and entreating. He would never see her again: he was sure of that. But at the same time he perceived the uselessness of insisting. She wanted him to forget her; the interview had merely been to suppress all traces of the past still existing between them. And he allowed her to pass out of his sight.
From that day on, the life of the Prince lacked a purpose. Something had broken within him: his will had crumbled to dust, enveloping his senses in a sort of fog. What was to be done? Not even the narrowest of paths remained open to his initiative. Alicia hated him as though he were an enemy. It meant good-by for all time! There still remained the other man, but the Prince was invulnerable as far as Martinez was concerned.
It was enough for him to think of what had happened in Lewis' castle to lose all intention of violence. He cursed his Slavic sentimentality, so confused and incoherent, like his mother's, which prevented him from going to the end in malice, and causing him to fall, when he least expected it, into exaggerated submission. Alas, for his tears of repentance! Alas for that kiss on his adversary's hand! If he avoided returning to the Casino, it was in order not to meet Martinez and those two Captains who had witnessed the incomprehensible conclusion of the duel. He no longer had the energy to impose his will; his former harshness of character had melted with the catastrophe of his desires.
He shut himself up once again in Villa Sirena, in order not to see any one. He hated people, and at the same time he thought with a certain terror of the ill-concealed smiles that might greet his passing, and the remarks that might be exchanged behind his back.
Don Marcos was the one companion of his loneliness; and Lubimoff, who during the first few days exchanged but a few words with him, finally came to wish that he would hurry back from Monte Carlo, at nightfall, in order to hear the news, which in other days he would have considered insignificant. They entered into long conversations on what was going on in the Casino, or on the happenings of the world. It was the curiosity of a prisoner or an invalid, who takes an exaggerated interest in things, as he loses his sense of values, owing to his inability to move about in his confinement.
The Colonel was giving less and less importance to the events of daily life. All his attention had been focused on the Atlantic Coast and the opposite shores of the ocean.
"They keep on coming!" he said, after greeting the Prince. "The Americans keep on coming: a regular crusade. There are hundreds of thousands of them; there are millions. And to think that a lot of people considered the talk of sending armies from America mere bluff!"
He was really indignant at such ignorance, quite forgetting his skepticism of a few months before.