“Come to me, Janka, come! Do not bear me more ill-will than I bear to you. Remember that everything in our relations is still just as it was before. The memories are too deep-rooted; I cannot—— Once I loved you even more than——
“I await you. M.”
I shall go to her to-morrow.
She received me, clad in a black dressing-gown, with grey borders and a silver fringe. I found it hard to conceal the painful impression that I felt. We talked together in a friendly way for about an hour.
With some air of mystery, she explained to me the idea she had of fitting up a boudoir entirely in mourning. “It might be made quite ornamental. The walls hung with crêpe, the furniture of black wood, upholstered with white plush, crosses of silver and of ebony, standing and suspended chandeliers of silver, a profusion of such flowers as are used to dress a catafalque, a large table in the centre, covered with a black cloth. And the boudoir lit with wax tapers only.”
She then showed me an album bound in black leather, with a silver cross that stood out in relief on the cover.
With an embarrassed smile, she explained its contents to me.
“Here I have placed all Witold’s loves, in chronological order,” she said, and the very sound of his name made her blush hotly. “The number looks very great indeed, but this is because I have in many cases several portraits of the same person.”
I looked it over for a time, enthralled and captivated by these faces, each of a different type, some laughing, some grave, some pathetic, others comical or exotic or commonplace, these full of fire, those ethereal-looking; many attired in the strangest raiment, or posing in voluptuous attitudes, and stretching out their half-nude limbs with serpent-like grace,—all these surrounded with Oriental magnificence: and again exquisite women, very lady-like in their British stiffness, and the sexless elegance of their tailor-made dresses simple but striking. A multitudinous chaotic assembly of many a style and many a nationality, down to one monstrously sensual negress, no doubt a singer in some music-hall.
“Since you have been away,” she said, “it has been a custom with me to pore over this album. Those different faces remind me of the different periods of my life. I possess but few belonging to the old times of Witold’s love-making; but of those he loved since he married, not one is wanting here. Some of them I purchased myself.”