Lubimoff smiled with a certain air of pity.
"You a lover?"
She went on talking as though her listener's surprise annoyed her. What was other women's love compared to hers? They fixed their tenderness, their desire for self-sacrifice, on one man only. Beyond him they found nothing worthy of interest. She loved all men, all of them, even the soldiers of the enemy whom she had often cared for in the ambulances at the front. They were mistaken, and if they really were guilty souls and wished to continue being so, all she could see in them was their physical condition as, threatened by death, they lay stretched out on their beds, with their flesh mangled. They were simply unfortunate beings, and this was enough to make her forget their nationality.
She wanted her own side to triumph because the other represented the exaltation of brute strength, the glorification of war, and it was her desire that there should be no more wars. She longed for the time when love would rule the whole world!... It was bad enough that men could not suppress with like facility, poverty, pain and death, the black divinities which seize us at our birth and with whom we struggle up to the last moment.
"I love everything that is alive: People, animals, and flowers. Beside such love, what is the affection between a man and a woman, which people consider the only love and is simply the selfishness of two beings setting themselves apart from their fellow beings, and living only for themselves? My love is likewise a kind of selfishness. I realize it; perhaps it is something worse: pride. If you only knew how gay I feel when I have saved from death one of my 'flirts,' one of those poor wounded men whom I shall never see again!... No, don't admire me, Prince, and don't feel sorry for me. I am merely a poor woman! by no means an angel! Moreover, I am very bad; I have my repentances, like every one else."
"You, Lady Mary!" the Prince exclaimed again with a look of incredulity. That he should have no doubts about it she hastened to relate the great sin of her life. Traveling through Andalusia she had seen some boys on a river bank who were trying to drown a stray dog, throwing stones at it. Mary fell upon them, mad with rage, striking them with her parasol. One of the little fellows wept, and blood spurted from his nostrils. This unhappy memory had often troubled her in the night. Now she could not see a child without caressing it with all the ardor occasioned by remorse.
Also she had had quarrels in various countries with drivers who were whipping their work animals and with hotel keepers who would not allow her to keep in her room lost dogs and cats she found in the streets.
Before the war, her pity had been entirely for animals. Humanity was able to defend itself. But now, the butchery of beings in uniforms had turned her sweet tenderness toward mankind. They needed love and protection more than the poor brutes.
The mention of her "flirts" suddenly brought her back to her duty. At that very moment they were tossing, covered with bandages, in their beds, and anxiously calling for her presence. Or else they were sitting on a bench with motionless eyes turned toward the sun, refusing to take a walk until they could feel the gentle support of her arm. "Good-by, Prince!" She must go! Her lovers were waiting for her.
As she stood up, she thought again of the reason for her visit and spoke once more in the tone that revealed the firmness of her will.