“It might have been,” he argued. “But now....”
“I beg your pardon, it’s just exactly now that they’ll come in handy. Think of it! First of all, a big steam-yacht, ... they’re not cheap toys. A special private car....”
“But I have those already,” he mourned. “I became heir to my father’s whole outfit, lock, stock, and barrel. There’s not a thing to look forward to any more!”
“Dear, dear! What it is to be pampered.” She rose and, bending over him, smoothed his hard little apology for a pillow. “I must go and dress for dinner,” she explained. “I wish I didn’t have to leave you here alone.”
He pressed his lips to her hand as it flitted beside his head. “You have been so good to me, so very, very good,” he said, with emotion, “I hate to think I am leaving you to-morrow, never to see you again.”
“Because,” he said--“because there seems to me no possibility, even with ‘my big yacht,’ to come once more and darken your doors with the memories I would unavoidably suggest.”
“I don’t agree with you at all,” she asserted; “but we will come back to this to-morrow morning. Now go to sleep as soon as you can, like a good child. _Buènas noches!_”
“_Felices sueños!_” he murmured, raising his eyes wistfully. “You,” he added, “seem determined to heap coals of scriptural fire upon undeserving heads. Do you always return good for evil?”
“Evil!” she mused aloud. “Good for evil? Granting that this be my habit, it would merely be a selfish one, for if one returns evil for evil and bite for bite, one is cheated. There is nothing more then for Almighty God to do; it is much better to remain His creditor.”
“That’s a new view of the case,” he pondered, and then, in an altered tone, suddenly added: “Madame de Salvières, you have always done so much for me, will you--will you kiss me good night?”
“Why, yes, of course I will,” she assented, and, bending once more over him, she kissed him on the forehead. “_Voilà, mon enfant_,” she said, pushing back his hair; and he watched her white dress disappear in the penumbra of the immense room.
Left alone, he gave a long, shuddering sigh, and for a moment closed his eyes very tight. When he opened them again he let them wander about the room, with its splendid tapestries, its admirably preserved antique furniture, its deep window embayments filled by transparent shadows, that revealed here the dull gold of a frame, there the bevel of a looking-glass, the pale gleam of ivory, the deeper darkness of bronze, and the groups of flowering plants Tatiana had caused to be brought there for the pleasure of his gaze. Close beside him on a very low table, which he could easily reach without moving more than his arm, stood a great bunch of violets in a bowl of Venetian glass; there was also there a block-note provided with paper and envelopes, a fountain-pen, a silver tray upon which rested a decanter of Muscat de Frontignan, a box of cigarettes, a match-safe, and a glass, and on the other edge two or three little medicine-bottles and a crystal spoon.