He hesitated a moment before the last word.
'I will remember,' she said gently; but without much effort she would have burst into tears.
He saw the effort, and it irritated him. He knew that he ought to have said to her, 'Follow your inclination and refuse, if you like.' But her wish to refuse it had annoyed him, and hurried him into a command to accept it from which he could not recede. And the charm of Nadine Napraxine was upon him, and had broken down all his wiser resolutions.
He looked across the table at Yseulte. She was as fair as the dawn, certainly; but she had no power over him; she did not beguile his time, or stimulate his wit, or stir his intellect; she did not, even after twelve months of possession, move his senses. She was a lovely child, most obedient, tender, and spiritual; but--she was not the mistress of his thoughts. She never had been, she never would be so.
'How stupid men are!' thought Nadine Napraxine that night. 'She is worth very much more than I am; she is both handsome and lovely; she is as harmless and guileless as a dove, and she adores him, a great deal too much; yet, perhaps one ought to say therefore, he cares nothing on earth for her; he will love me as long as his life lasts; he would do so even if I had the tremendous penalty-weight, as the racing-men say, of being his wife. I really do not know why it is that the noblest sort of women do not excite love. I wonder why it is? I asked my father once; he said, "Because the devil dowers his own daughters." But that explains nothing; we all know there is no devil; there are women--and women. That is all.'
As those thoughts drifted dreamily through her mind she was conversing all the while about classic music with a potentate who was no mean dilettante in melody, and she was looking down her table at the young face of Yseulte with a vague sort of pity which she could scarcely have explained,--such pity as in the gladiatorial arena some trained and irresistible _retiarius_ might have felt at seeing some fair brave youth enter with the shield that was to be so useless and the sword that was so soon to fail; a pity which might be quite sincere, though it might never go so far as mercy. The faint jealousy which she had felt when, walking amongst the moonlit fields of Zaraïzoff, she had thought of Amyôt, had faded altogether the moment that she had met Othmar again. She knew, as women always know such things, that her power over him was unaltered and unalterable by any will of his own.