Othmar looked at her without speaking. Something of the impotent rage against her with which he had left her in Paris awoke in him under the sting of her ever dulcet tones, in which a little tone of mockery could be felt rather than heard.
She lifted her eyebrows with impatience and astonishment.
'_Vous voila emballé!_ Dear Othmar, I should like you so much if you would not always revert to that old theme. You are a man of the world, or you ought to be one. Be amusing, even be instructive if you like; I do not mind being instructed, but do not be romantic. Nobody is nowadays; not even the novelists.'
'Did you never love anyone?' he repeated.
'You speak as if I were forty years old, with a cabinet full of old letters and faded roses! No; I never loved anybody, not even Platon!'
The notion suggested in her last words tickled her fancy so much that she laughed outright.
'I suppose,' she continued, 'somewhere in the world there are women who have loved Platon; but it seems too funny. He is always eating when he is not drinking; he is always smoking when he is not sleeping; _admettons, donc_, that Cupid must fly from his presence. How grave you look. I believe you have something of the Eastern in you, and think that all women should be prostrate before their husbands. There is a good deal of that idea among the moujiks; it must be very agreeable--for the man.'
'Why did you marry him?' said Othmar, gloomily; it hurt his sense of honour to speak of Napraxine in Napraxine's house; yet he could not repress the question.
'Oh, my friend, why do girls always marry?' she said, indifferently. 'Because the marriage is there; because the families have arranged it; because one does not know; because one wishes for freedom, for jewels, for the world; because one does not care to be a _fillette_, chaperoned at every step. There are many reasons that make one marry: it is the thing to do--everyone does it; when a girl sees the young married women, she sees them flirted with, sought, monopolising everything; it is like standing behind a shut door and hearing people laughing and singing on the other side, while you cannot get to them; besides, Platon did as well as anybody else, he is more good-natured than most; he never interferes; he is very peaceable----'