“You will be a real benefactress,” I laughed. “Everyone here is stifled; while Dieppe is too crowded; Aix, with its eternal Villa des Fleurs, is insupportable; and both Royat and Vichy are full to overflowing.”
“Ah, mon cher Gerald!” cried the Princess, lifting her small hands, “it is your English tourists who have spoilt all our summer resorts. If one has no place of one’s own in which to spend the summer nowadays, one must herd with the holders of tourist tickets and hotel coupons.”
I admitted that what she said was in a great measure true. Society, as the grande dame knows it, is being expelled by the tourists from the places which until a year or two ago were expensive and exclusive. Even the Riviera is fast becoming a cheap winter resort, for Nice now deserves to be called the Margate of the Continent.
Having arranged that I should do my best to accept her invitation, our conversation drifted to politics, art, and the drama. She seemed in utter ignorance of recent events, except such as she had read about in the newspapers.
“I know nothing,” she laughed. “News reaches Rudolstadt tardily, and then only by the journals; and you know how unreliable they are. How I’ve longed time after time to spend an evening in Paris to hear all the gossip! It is charming, I assure you, to be back here again.”
“But for what reason did you shut yourself up for so long?” I asked. “It surely is not like you!”
She grew grave in an instant, and appeared to hesitate. Her lips closed tightly, and there was a hard expression at the corners of her well-shaped mouth.
“I had my reasons—strong ones.”
“What were they?”
“Well, I was tired of it all.”