CHAPTER XIII.

THE LAST OF A PRINCESS.

The days that followed the carrying off of her daughter by Pierre

Olsdorf were a terrible trial to Lise Barineff. Her heart had bled, as

her mother reminded her, that the divorce would rear an impassable

barrier between her and her son, but being prepared, so to speak, in

advance for this separation, she had sought a refuge from the sorrow it

caused her in her tenderness for her last-born infant. And this doubly

adored child had been taken from her now. Who would give to this babe of

a few months old the care that was the duty of its mother? Its mother

would not now watch its growth, or tend on it if it were sick; a

stranger would dry its tears, win its smiles, and have its love.

She fully understood the fatal logic by which the prince's conduct had

been dictated in taking away Tekla. In the eyes of the law he was her

father; if he had left the child to its mother it would have been a

disavowal of his paternity, and consequently the casting upon her, the

adulterous wife, the sin that he had taken upon himself in order that

the decree of divorce might be pronounced against him. She was forced,

therefore, to acknowledge that if he had cruelly used his power, Pierre

Olsdorf had, in doing so, only been faithful to the line of conduct he

had adopted; and she suffered the more in being able to accuse only

herself.

For the first time the unhappy woman regretted the past, and felt

remorse. For many days nothing could console her. She was insensible

even to Paul's caresses, and he himself was much affected by the loss of

their daughter; but little by little their love gained through this

trial an elevation that hitherto it had been lacking in. They loved less

coarsely, because they wept together.

There is nothing that transforms a deep passion as a deep sorrow does.

Passion tried in the fire quits in part the senses to penetrate to the

heart, till then scarcely touched. Suffering undergone together often

makes lasting the frail bond between two beings whom their desires alone

have drawn one to the other.

Lise and Paul experienced this psychological truth. They spoke less of

their love, but it was deeper. The isolation that circumstances imposed

upon them drew them more together; and it made them feel, too, that they

must hasten their marriage.

They were no longer two lovers desirous of freedom to live in each

other's arms; they were two wanderers from the path wishing to gain the

right to hold up their heads, two outcasts longing for the joys of the

domestic hearth.

Unhappily they had reason to fear an enforced delay of several months,

as, the Code Napoleon having been adopted in Roumania, Paul was

compelled to obtain his mother's consent. If he had written to her for

it, Mme. Meyrin, although she adored her son, would not have replied,

goaded to resistance by her daughter-in-law.

The painter, however, had an ally in the house--his brother Frantz; but

that good fellow was himself under the domination of his wife, and any

timid remarks that he ventured on were fruitless.

Paul determined then to have recourse to extreme measures, that is, to

the "respectful summon" prescribed by law. However, wishing, out of

deference, to forewarn his mother, he wrote to her as follows:

"DEAR MOTHER,--I have a duty to fulfill, touching my

honor, and you oppose me because you are ill-advised.

If you listened only to your love for me you would

long since have consented to my marriage with a woman

whom you already love and who, whatever happens, will

never be aught but the most affectionate and devoted

of daughters to you. In face of your opposition and

what my honor imposes upon me, I have no other course

but to seek from the law what you deny me. I am deeply

pained to have to do this, but my determination is

unchangeable.

"Once more then, my dear good mother, consult, I say,

your own heart alone, and do not force me to take so

painful a step.

"Your loving and respectful son,

"PAUL."

Much touched at reading this letter, which had reached her in the

absence of her daughter-in-law, Mme. Meyrin hurried to her son. Since

the rupture with his family he had been living at his studio.

Paul opened the door to her.

"So, my son, you would leave me?" said the poor woman, sinking on to the

sofa to which he had led her. "Between your old mother and a stranger

you do not hesitate; your choice is at once made. Ah, I could curse the

day you went to Russia. If I were to consent to your marriage, how could

I live afterward with your sister-in-law? She would never forgive me my

weakness."

"You shall come and live with us," said Paul, kneeling beside her. "Be

sure that Lise and I will love you dearly."

"I could not, my son. Habits are not changed when one is my age. And,

then, my love for Frantz is as great as my love for you. If I left him I

should be ungrateful, for these ten years he has made my life a pleasant

and happy one. You see, we are in a coil. Do you love this woman so

much, then?"

"Yes, mother, I love her sincerely; I love her more now than I did

before. Besides, it is my duty, having ruined her life, not to abandon

her, alone as she is, without her children. You know that the prince has

taken from her her little daughter--her daughter and mine."

"God is punishing you both."

Feeling that she had really lost her hold on her son, Mme. Meyrin began

to cry.

Paul, unable to bear up against his mother's tears, sprung to his feet,

and after looking at her for some moments, said, with a calmness and

determination foreign to his nature:

"Well, so be it, mother. We will speak no more of this marriage. I will

not appeal to the law; I will wait for your consent to my marriage with

Lise. But I will start for St. Petersburg to-morrow."

"For St. Petersburg? What to do?"

"To put myself at the disposal of Prince Olsdorf."

"At the disposal of Prince Olsdorf?"

"The last words of the prince to his wife were these: 'If Monsieur Paul

Meyrin does not marry you, I will kill him.' I will not have it that a

Russian shall be able to say a Roumanian is, in my person, a coward."

"My son, my son!" cried Mme. Meyrin, seizing him in her arms. "You will

fight? It is my refusal that would send you to brave this man? Give me

ink and a pen. I will sign my consent. Tell me--tell me quick what I am

to write. A duel! And I, your mother--"

The good creature, interrupting her words with kisses, dragged her son

to a table in one of the corners of the studio. She was eager to sign

the consent at once.

The artist yielded to her wish and dictated the few lines necessary.

"There, are you satisfied, bad boy?" said Mme. Meyrin, after writing and

signing with a trembling hand. "You will talk no more of going away,

will you? A duel!"

"Dear mother," replied Paul, his eyes filled with tears of gratitude as

he kissed her. "I will stay in Paris, and owe you more than ever."

"And now I will go and get my scolding over--yonder."

She pressed her son again to her heart and returned to the Rue de Douai,

where, to have it over and done with, she told all to her

daughter-in-law, who had just come in.

"You are a free agent," said Mme. Frantz, in a tart voice, "but this

woman shall not put foot in my house."

Thinking it prudent to enter into no dispute and so avoid a scene, Mme.

Meyrin returned to her room.

Immediately after his mother had left him, Paul ran to tell Lise

Barineff that the last obstacle to their union was done away with.

"At last, thank God!" replied the young woman. "If you had been forced

to appeal to the law, I think it would have brought us bad luck. Then,

too, people would have begun talking about us again. They have done so

already more than enough, not only in St. Petersburg, which I have just

had some letters from, but also in Paris. The newspapers are taking it

up now. Have you seen this morning's 'Figaro?'"

"No. What does it say?"

"It announces our coming marriage. And see in what terms."

The painter took the journal that Lise offered him and read in the

"Echos":

"All Paris must have noticed at the last Salon a very

beautiful portrait of a woman, a picture which won a

medal for its painter, Monsieur Paul Meyrin. The

artist had excellent opportunities for studying his

charming model, as he was often seen hiding himself at

the back of her box at the opera or the Opera Comique.

It was a case, no doubt, of budding love, as the great

Russian lady, none other than the ex-Princess Olsdorf,

will very soon be known as simply Madame Meyrin.

"The young painter made the acquaintance of the

princess at St. Petersburg. But what rather surprises

the fashionable world of Russia is that the divorce

has been pronounced against the prince who, it is

said, is a charming man, distinguished, and with the

reputation, moreover, of having been a model husband.

There is some piquant, domestic mystery under the

surface which it is not for us to seek after. We will

content ourselves by applauding this marriage, for it

wins back for us a countrywoman of our own, or pretty

nearly so. The ex-princess is, in fact, the daughter

of that beautiful Madame Froment who, after winning

much applause at the Odeon in classical pieces with

Dumesnil, was engaged in St. Petersburg at the Michael

Theatre, which she left only to become the Countess

Barineff."

"Where has the 'Figaro' got all its information?" asked Paul, having

read the paragraphs.

"From some good soul in St. Petersburg, no doubt," said the young woman,

in whose mind the name of her mother's former friend did not seem to

suggest any thought.

The painter made a shrewd guess that Sarah Lamber was no stranger to

this tittle-tattle; but, careful not to recall the unpleasant memory of

her, he said, affecting indifference:

"There is nothing offensive in the article."

"No; but it will provoke my mother more and more against us. Nothing is

so disagreeable to her as to be reminded that she was once an actress."

"I confess I did not know it."

"She fancies always that nobody knows anything about it. I am not so

proud. All I ask of the future is your eternal love."

Lise Barineff could not foresee what effect the coupling of her name

with that of Dumesnil was to have upon the vain countess.

Certainly the author of the article knew more about the affair than he

cared to tell.

To make an end of the matter, Paul held out his hands to his future

wife, and they fixed forthwith the date of the marriage for a fortnight

later.

All that was needful then to be done was for the artist to find suitable

rooms, which he did at 112 Rue d'Assas, one of them being fit for a

studio, and to furnish them.

In the intervening fortnight Paul saw his mother and his brother several

times, but not once his sister-in-law. Though Mme. Meyrin and Frantz had

promised to be present at the marriage, Barbe was firm; she would stay

at home.

Lise and Paul felt that the ceremony ought to be as quiet a one as

possible. For that matter the chapel where it was to take place would

scarcely have allowed it to be otherwise. It was a place of primitive

simplicity and would not have held fifty people.

Few of our readers know, even by name, this little chapel of the Greek

Church, which stands on the left bank of the Seine, in the Rue Racine,

on the second floor.

In a set of very common rooms, the residence of the Patriarch of

Constantinople, one had been turned into a chapel. Where the bed used to

stand, an altar had been reared, with its Byzantine ornaments polished

and shining for the occasion.

When the bride and bridegroom arrived the priest was awaiting them,

and, being in mourning, he wore a great black veil, which gave him

almost a lugubrious look. The walls were covered with a grayish paper,

and hung sparsely with tawdry religious pictures in gold frames. The

room had a wretched look, which struck Lise. This was very different

from the splendor her mother had made a show of in the Church of Isaac

at St. Petersburg.

In spite of herself she could not but recall that day. Representatives

of the oldest Russian families, nearly all of them connected by blood or

marriage one with the other, were present to do honor to Prince Olsdorf.

The arch-priest who officiated wore the richest of his sacerdotal

ornaments; the air was heavy with perfumes; from amid women of the

highest title and most exclusive fashion in St. Petersburg, her mother

smiled on her proudly. Now the scene was a furnished room, the priest, a

priest of low grade, wrapped in black. There were a score or so of

onlookers, acquaintances of her husband, artists, curious or

indifferent, as the case might be, all of them, except Mme. Meyrin, the

mother, Frantz, and the good and gentle Mme. Daubrel, who, bent in

prayer over her chair, sent up to Heaven sincere supplications for the

happiness of her friend, as she herself, too, cast a sad look backward

upon the past.

The daughter of the Countess Barineff had noticed among the spectators a

stout man, perhaps sixty years old, whom she had often seen at the

Meyrins', and who now kept his eyes fixed on her, while his attitude,

his smile, and his muttered asides, indicated strange emotion as well as

inexpressible vanity. By reason of his clean-shaven face, his pale

complexion, the way in which he held his hat, resting it on his left hip

and rounding his arm, his right hand thrust into the depths of his

double-breasted and carefully buttoned coat, in the style of the

portraits of the first Napoleon, he was unmistakably an actor.

It was none other than the old Dumesnil, one of the most faithful

interpreters of stock roles at the Odeon, a very good sort of fellow at

bottom, but rather ludicrous from his habit of always fancying himself

on the stage, the buskins on his legs, the toga hanging from his

shoulders. Lise had given him an affectionate smile.

In less than half an hour all was over, and the bride and bridegroom,

having shaken hands with the witnesses of the marriage, got into their

carriage and were driven to their apartments in the Rue d'Assas, while

Dumesnil, who had looked after them with tearful eyes, walked away

muttering a verse which his memory of classical roles supplied him with,

or which was an indifferent impromptu for the occasion:

"A tout ce qui seduit, preferant le bonheur,

Elle a quitte pour lui palais, gloire et splendeur."

The following day the ex-Princess Olsdorf began a calm, prosaic,

middle-class life. She wished to think she was quite ready to accept it,

without revolt or regrets. She told herself that Paul, in compensating

her for all she had abandoned, would make her forget it. She refused to

think of the past, longing only to become a mother for the third time,

to satisfy the heart-hunger that the absence of her children had roused

in her.

That nothing might recall the past to her, and perhaps also because her

pride made her dread their ironical smiles, she discharged her former

servants, being satisfied for the time, until she could organize her

household, with a cook and a lady's-maid, engaged in haste and almost

without inquiry.

The first evening of her new life, tired out by the events of the day,

and waiting for Paul, who was putting things straight in his studio,

Lise sunk into a chair, and, in spite of herself, her mind turned to the

past, now left so far behind.

In her waking dream she smiled sadly on Alexander and Tekla; she saw

again the chateau of Pampeln and its shady park, her companions in the

chase, urged on by the horns of the huntsmen, her drosky drawn at

lightning speed by its three horses flecked with foam; and, standing at

the door of the banqueting hall, with its elaborate wood carvings, she

saw the butler, clothed in strictly correct black, appearing to announce

in his sonorous voice, "Madame la Princess is served," when, suddenly

startled from her thoughts by the entrance of her maid, she came back to

the reality indeed as the girl said:

"Madame, the soup is on the table."

With a slight involuntary shiver, the ex-Princess Olsdorf could not,

however, help smiling; and as her husband appeared at this moment, she

rose quickly and hurried toward him, saying in an almost passionate

voice, a sort of echo of the feelings called to aid in completely

burying the past:

"Come, love, your arm for Madame Paul Meyrin."

PART II.

MADAME PAUL MEYRIN.

CHAPTER I.

VERA SOUBLAIEFF.

Vera's journey back to Pampeln was in no respect, it may well be

imagined, like the journey she had made to France. Three months ago,

when her first grief at leaving her father and giving up the daily round

of her life, so sweet and placid, amid people who adored her, had

passed, an eager curiosity had seized upon her. Notwithstanding her

purity and ignorance of life, she felt, like a true daughter of Eve, the

pleasure of being carried off to Paris and of living a life so different

from that which she had hitherto known.

With the delight of a woman in such surroundings, she nestled in a

corner of the well-cushioned and padded compartment in which the prince

had placed her; and there, alone with her thoughts, under the physical

charm of the rapid course of the train, which frightened her too, a

little, had she fallen asleep as the night wore on, not much regretting

her virginal bed at the Elva farm.

Next day, when Pierre Olsdorf, beginning with the part he intended to

play toward the daughter of Soublaieff, came to ask her how she had

passed the night, Vera was a good deal surprised for the moment; and her

master had to insist before he could make her take her place at table

beside him at the refreshment-room at Konigsberg; but, ascribing the

honor that was done her to the necessities of the journey, she felt some

little innocent vanity about it, and nothing more.

So it was all the way, and the pretty young Russian girl, thanks to her

simplicity, arrived in Paris ready to be surprised at all the events

that were to follow each other day by day, awakening only her

imagination, until the moment came when her heart was moved so deeply.

How far behind were these things now! So far that she sometimes wondered

if she had not merely dreamed them.

And then she would close her eyes, trying to dream still. She went over

again the most trifling events of her stay in Paris--her surprise when

Yvan summoned her to the luncheon-table of the prince; her emotions day

by day as her master, growing kinder and more attentive with each

succeeding one, had made their lives almost one; until that hour, the

thought of which still made her shiver, when fate had cast her into his

arms.

Though the daughter of the farmer of Elva had come a virgin from that

embrace, the momentary abandoning of herself to it had made of her a

woman; it had taught her that she loved, and had raised in her an ardent

desire to be beloved.

What would be the end of this passion? She scarcely dared think of that.

Understanding now the part she had played, she asked herself, trembling

at the thought, if the prince would not look upon her as the blind

instrument he had used, and whether, when they were once again in

Pampeln, she would not be parted from him forever.

The dread of it caused her bitter grief; and yet, when she put the idea

aside as impossible, she then feared to think of what would inevitably

happen if it were, on the contrary, Pierre Olsdorf's will to keep her by

his side. Assuredly her father knew of the divorce and the change in the

life of his master. The decree was an event which the whole nobility of

St. Petersburg must have discussed, making every possible conjecture to

explain how it had come about that the decree was against the prince and

not against his wife, whose sin everybody knew. Why, then, had Pierre

Olsdorf chosen to seem guilty--guilty instead of her--if he did not love

her? Vera could not guess the reason, in her ignorance of the law and

the consequences that had followed upon the action of the man to whom

her whole heart was given.

All these reflections troubled strangely the poor girl, whom the bearing

of her master did not calm, for as they drew nearer the end of their

journey Pierre seemed more and more preoccupied and silent. At each

important station he did indeed come to assure himself that Vera wanted

for nothing in the reserved compartment that she was in, together with a

nurse and the little Tekla; but he seemed to avoid being alone with her,

and Soublaieff's daughter had looked vainly into his eyes for the

reason. Plainly the prince was warding off an explanation. What would

become of her? How dared she appear again before her father, so jealous

of his honor? Was not death itself better than the agony and the

reproaches she was threatened with?

Again and again during the last night of the journey the unhappy girl

thought of throwing herself from the carriage. But death! And if she

were indeed loved? Then her tears fell, and she gave herself to God's

care.

In this frame of mind Vera left the train at Mittau, where the prince's

carriages, telegraphed for from Paris, were in waiting for the

travelers, to take them to Pampeln.

At first the young girl hoped that Pierre would ask her to go with him

in the drosky, which would hold but two persons; but he put her in the

landau, where the nurse and baby already were, and after speaking a few

commonplace words in the way of excuses for putting her to so much

fatigue, he sprung into the lighter carriage beside Yvan.

The luggage was to follow in an omnibus, with the servants who had come

to meet their master.

This fresh disappointment for Vera had scarcely been mastered when,

after a three hours' drive, she caught sight of the heavy-looking front

of Pampeln, and soon the wheels of the landau were grinding through the

sand of the court-yard and stopping before the flight of steps leading

down from the main entrance.

Quite given up to her gloomy thoughts, the farmer's daughter stepped

from the carriage. She was surprised to find her hand in that of the

prince, who, drawing her a little way aside at the foot of the marble

staircase, said in a troubled voice:

"Pardon me, dear child, for the silence I have kept since we left Paris,

but I have determined that there ought to be no explanation between us

until after I have seen your father. I have sent word to him to expect

me at Elva, where I am going to seek him. In a couple of hours I shall

be here again. Until then trust me. Soon, I hope, you will have ceased

to be displeased with me, and will doubt no more either my gratitude or

my affection."

Vera replied only with a look from her great limpid eyes raised to his.

Pierre Olsdorf pressed both her hands in his, and sprung into the

drosky, to which fresh horses had been harnessed.

The young girl followed him with her eyes until he disappeared from

sight at the end of the great avenue; then she slowly mounted the

stairs, and passing through the fencing-room, gained the chapel, where

she knelt in devotion on the stone floor, murmuring:

"If my father rejects me, what shall I do? Oh, God! have pity on me!"

Vera was still in prayers as the lord of Pampeln reached Elva.

"Is my daughter ill, prince?" exclaimed Soublaieff, meeting his master

at the outer fence of the farm.

"No; do not be uneasy, Alexei; Vera is well," replied Pierre Olsdorf,

alighting; "but her presence was needed at the chateau. That is the only

reason why she has not come with me. To-night, even, you can embrace

her; and to-morrow, if you wish it, she shall come back to you. I have

much to say to you."

Struck by the grave look on the prince's face, as well as by the sad

tones of his voice, the farmer followed him without daring to question

him anew.

In the large lower room of the farm-house, wherein on hunting days he

was wont to assemble his friends, the master of Pampeln seated himself,

and signed to Soublaieff to take a place opposite to him after closing

the doors.

His heart filled with sad forebodings, the former serf obeyed.

"Alexei," said Prince Olsdorf, after a few moments' silence, "you must

listen without interrupting me, and without being troubled unreasonably

at the tale of the scenes that have passed in Paris in which your

daughter has played an important part, and which I will relate to you,

hiding nothing. I should say, first of all, that Vera returns to you as

worthy of your respect and of the affection of all as she was before she

left you. I give you my word of honor on that."

"I believe you, prince; I believe you," replied Soublaieff, in a low

voice.

"You know," said the former husband of Lise Barineff, "that the Holy

Synod has pronounced a divorce against me on the petition of the woman

who bore my name."

"Against you?"

"Yes, against me. Ah! that surprises you? Even here, then, my misfortune

was known. Well, well! Yes, against me. I wished that it should be so,

though all the wrong was on the side of the princess; but if it had been

otherwise, that is, if the divorce had been pronounced in my favor, she

would have been dishonored, and her dishonor would have been reflected

upon me and upon my son, Alexander. I would not permit that. The name of

Olsdorf must remain stainless. To gain my end I had to affect a sin that

left me without defense. Your daughter was my accomplice."

"My daughter!" cried Soublaieff, springing to his feet.

"I prayed that you would listen to me calmly. I swear to you again, on

the honor of my race, that Vera is still the spotless maiden that you

trusted to me."

Alexei sunk back into his chair again, his eyes filling with tears.

Pierre Olsdorf went on:

"Without understanding the part she was playing, your daughter obeyed me

with such devotion and simplicity that the official appointed to gather

proofs of the act of adultery I was guilty of was deceived, as was the

princess herself, who accompanied him, as the law requires. Thanks to

Vera, I succeeded completely. I made no attempt to defend myself, and

your daughter was not questioned at all. The divorce was pronounced

against me, but I was left with the guardianship of my children: I say

of my children, for the princess had been delivered of a daughter, whom

I could not disown without accusing of adultery the woman whom I wished

to leave worthy, in the eyes of the world, of respect; and Lise Olsdorf,

by my order, will become the wife of the man with whom she deceived me.

The child who bears my name necessarily I have brought back with me, and

have given her to the care of Vera. That is why your daughter is at

Pampeln; terrified as she is at the thought that, wrongly informed of

what has happened far from here, you may believe her guilty, and take

from her your love."

"My darling Vera," cried Soublaieff. "Oh! let her come now, at once, to

Elva. I will never let her know what I have suffered by her absence and

at your story. I knew nothing of what you have just told me, and I

believe you as I would an angel from heaven. But if I, her father, do

not doubt her purity, will others, knowing all that has happened in that

accursed Paris, believe that Vera Soublaieff has been a virtuous girl

throughout? What will become of her? What man who has a care for his

honor would take her now for his wife? Ah! Pierre Alexandrowich, though

you respected her innocence, you have ruined my daughter none the less."

Pierre Olsdorf's head was lowered. He understood the sorrow of the

father whose daughter's name was forever compromised.

"Yes," he replied, however; "yes, Alexei, I am deeply guilty, I confess.

But do not fear. No one will dare to suspect Vera when I swear, on the

Holy Evangelists, that she is pure. And I will make her so rich that she

will find a husband worthy of her."

The prince said these words with so great an effort, and so pained a

smile, that Soublaieff trembled. His mind at rest on the fate of his

daughter, he saw now only the sufferings of the master who had

humiliated himself before him. He was far from imagining that Pierre

Olsdorf was in love with Vera, still less did he suppose that she loved

him. Such an idea could never have entered his mind. He thought only of

the misfortune that had fallen upon the house of Olsdorf, so widely

respected. The sin committed by the princess, whom everybody at Pampeln

loved, was inexplicable to him, and he pitied, to the bottom of his

heart, this great nobleman so shamefully betrayed by the woman he had

raised to his side. It seemed, as if, in a sense, he felt the shame of

it, as an old dependent of the family. His emotion was so great that he

did not even think of thanking the prince for his promise to secure

Vera's future.

Pierre Olsdorf was the first to speak again.

"Now," he said, "I need to make one more appeal to the devotion of your

daughter. After a short journey to St. Petersburg I shall leave

Russia--Europe indeed--for a long time. Where shall I go? I do not

know--but far, far from here. Alexander and this little girl must have a

sister near them, since they have no mother, and the law forbids me to

replace the woman who has proved herself unworthy. I wish to ask Vera to

be in the stead an elder sister to these two little deserted ones. She

will need then to live at the chateau, where I shall give orders that

she shall be obeyed as I myself. Before I go I will make provision for

the future of all of them, in case that anything should happen to me."

"Why leave us, prince?" said Soublaieff, "why go from us?"

"I must, Alexei. Time alone can close the wound I have received. Later

on, who knows but that I may forget? Can I count on you and on Vera?"

"My devotion to you, Pierre Alexandrowich, is as deep as my daughter's;

and you know what proof she has given of hers. What you order will be

done."

"Then all is well. Come with me to the chateau to embrace your daughter.

To-morrow I will give you my instructions, for I must go away by

nightfall. Your hand, Soublaieff. Thank you."

The farmer took respectfully the hand that Pierre Olsdorf offered him

and pressed it to his lips. Five minutes afterward they had mounted the

drosky to drive to Pampeln.

In less than half an hour they were there. Soublaieff, who had followed

his master into the fencing-room, saw Vera coming out of the chapel.

Seeing her father, whom she did not expect, the young girl stopped

suddenly, stifling a cry of fear, but when he came forward to her,

smiling, and with opened arms, she sprung to his breast, crying:

"Father, dear, dear father."

"Vera, my darling Vera," said Alexei again and again, covering her

forehead with kisses, "the prince has told me all. I have no reproaches

for you. God will reward your devotion. We will part no more. You shall

be as happy as you deserve to be."

At these words Soublaieff's daughter turned her eyes to the prince, who

stood by during this scene, and she was so struck by the look of pain on

his face that drawing herself from her father's arms she ran to him.

But Pierre Olsdorf, alarmed at Vera's movement, gave her no time to

speak.

"Calm yourself, dear child," he said, quickly, as much by his look as

his voice, as he took her hands in his, "your father knows the great

service you have done me, and I have told him how much I count on you

for still. You shall know to-morrow what I speak of. Meanwhile, be at

home here in the chateau, where you will live henceforward; your father

has given his consent. I leave you with him. To-morrow I shall see you

again."

Not waiting until she could answer, he walked rapidly away, after

pressing her hands affectionately in his.

"Poor prince," said Soublaieff going to his daughter, "how unhappy he

is. Who would have guessed what was going to happen? And now he means to

leave Pampeln, which is so full of sad memories for him."

"Leave Pampeln," cried Vera, not able to command herself, "leave us?

Where will he go to?"

"I don't know, but very far away, so he has told me. What is the matter

with you?"

The unhappy girl had grown ghastly pale. She could scarcely stand.

"Nothing, nothing," she said, making a great effort not to betray

herself further. "It is the fatigue of the journey, no doubt. Let me go

to bed now, father. I shall see you to-morrow, shall I not?"

"Yes, dear Vera, to-morrow. I have promised the prince to come and take

his instructions to-morrow. I shall go back to Elva now. Do you have a

good night's rest, and you will be as strong and brave when you wake as

if you had not traveled four hundred leagues."

And Soublaieff, having kissed his daughter tenderly, retired.

Night was falling. The great portraits of the ancestors of the Olsdorfs

that hung on the walls of the room; the suits of armor which stood as if

they covered still the men who had worn them of old; the fantastic

shadows which the last rays of daylight lengthened, streaming through

the colored glass of the Gothic window-frames; the mournful silence that

reigned around her, all filled Vera with so sudden a fear that she fled

in terror to the rooms which Yvan had told her were to be hers.

They were in the right wing of the chateau, near to those that Pierre's

son and his governess, Mme. Bernard, a worthy woman quite wrapped up in

the child intrusted to her care, occupied. It was the suite which was

usually reserved for the prince's more intimate friends. Very elegantly

furnished, it consisted of a dressing-room, a bath-room, and a small

sitting-room.

As soon as she got there, Vera burst into tears and sobs.

So all was over; the prince deserted her, careless of the love he had

won, love which either he did not see or perhaps despised; he was going

away, leaving her to her memories and her despair. She had been nothing

but a tool in his hands, of which he rid himself pitilessly. Her dream

was all a lie; he did not love her. What did she care for the comfort he

wished to leave her in? Was not her future life quite ruined? Why, then,

should she stay at Pampeln? No, she would not. With her father only

could she hope for forgetfulness. She would keep none of the rich

dresses and jewels that he had given her. They would but recall to her

hours of bliss and hope which she would no longer have the right to

remember. She would go back to Elva as she had come from it, poor and

simple, not to-morrow but then, that night, without seeing the man who

thought of her no more. She would walk the road from Pampeln to Elva,

all alone, as she used to do when she was a little girl and knew only by

sight, because they stopped at the farm on hunting days, elegant

carriages such as she had been driven about Paris in. The darkness would

not frighten her. What misfortune could happen to her greater than that

she was now suffering? And the poor child, her eyes filled with tears,

her hair falling about her shoulders, her hands trembling, turned over

the things in her trunks to find, among the silks and laces, the linen

gown and national head-dress which she had worn three months before

journeying to France. But each of the things she touched painfully

revived the memory of the past. This necklet of pearls was the prince's

first gift; these diamonds were in her ears that evening at the opera

when her appearance there for the first time had caused such surprise.

This white silk dress she had worn at the Italian opera when Patti sung;

in this furred mantle Pierre Olsdorf had wrapped her as they were

leaving the theater. These fans, these bracelets, she remembered with

what sweet words they had been given to her. On each thing she could

have put a date, so close in accord were her memory and her heart.

A long sigh, a sigh of love and despair, escaped from her lips, and a

blush rose to her face. She saw the dressing-gown of blue, trimmed with

lace, that she had taken off on that terrible night, in which was but

one moment of bliss, when, half naked, she had clung about the neck of

the prince to defend him or to seek his protection as the door of her

room was flung open. Could she ever forget that moment? Pierre had not

understood how she adored him. Yet had not she betrayed it plainly, in

her eyes, at the moment of that mad embrace?

"Oh, no," she sobbed, ready to fall to the ground, conquered by all

these emotions, "no, he will never love me."

"Never more than at this moment, Vera," a voice said suddenly that made

her tremble.

She sunk into the arms of Pierre Olsdorf who, without being heard by

her, had entered the room and had been watching her for some moments.

"Is it you?" murmured Soublaieff's daughter, closing her eyes as if,

fancying this was a new dream, she wished to lengthen it.

The prince carried rather than led her to a large sofa at one side of

the room. He laid her down on it, and kneeling beside her, said:

"Why do you doubt me? Vera, I have the sincerest and tenderest affection

for you. I will never forget what you have done for me nor the trouble I

have brought into your life. I am responsible for your future, and I

swear to you it shall be happy."

"You speak of happiness for me, Pierre Alexandrowich, and you are

leaving me," sobbed the young girl, with a despairing look in her eyes

brimming over with tears. "Why do you go? Why do you leave me alone?"

Never was woman more beautiful, more desirable, more intoxicating than

Vera in her sorrow and her chaste _abandon_. The dusky flood of her hair

sweeping about her, her scarlet lips parted as if they begged for a

kiss, the subtle fragrance of youth and maidenhood that innocently

offered itself--all this intoxicated Pierre Olsdorf. He had seized in

his the cold hands of the young girl, and, his head swimming, he felt

himself drawn irresistibly to her. But a last gleam of reason arrested

him; and rising he exclaimed:

"Oh, no, no; it would be an act of cowardice unworthy of me."

Vera, amazed, half raised herself, and her face showed such pain that

the prince, going to her quickly again, said hurriedly, mastering his

heart and his passions by a strong effort:

"Listen to me, my child, my darling, my beloved, and do not take from me

by your despair the courage I need. Yes, I love you, and yet I must go

from you. I must; it is my duty; that you may still be worthy of respect

and that I may still be an honorable man. I will not have it thought

that what happened in Paris happened only that I might be happy through

you. I will not give power to any one to accuse you of having been my

willing accomplice. How long shall I be away? God alone knows. Perhaps I

shall not have the strength to prolong our separation; but part we must,

for your sake and for mine. While I am far away and thinking of you you

will be a mother to my son and to that little creature who bears my

name, and whom, though I can not love, I can not abandon. You will be

mistress at Pampeln; and later, when time, if it has not cured, at least

will have cicatrized the horrible wound that I have received, I will

return, and I shall have forgotten nothing. Adieu."

Without waiting for Vera to answer him, Vera, who understood nothing but

that he was going to leave her, Prince Olsdorf seized her in his arms,

pressed his lips in a long kiss to hers quivering with sobs, and,

snatching himself from this intoxicating embrace, he let her sink,

fainting, on the sofa.

When Soublaieff's daughter again opened her eyes, she was alone.

Next morning, at day-break, after kissing his son, and having had long

interviews with his steward, Beschef, and the farmer of Elva, to whom he

gave a letter for his daughter, the prince left Pampeln for St.

Petersburg, where he had to submit to the will of the Holy Synod.

He had not had the courage to see Vera again. He took with him only his

faithful Yvan, to have near him some one on whom he could rely should

death strike him when far from home.

A fortnight later Pierre Olsdorf took ship at Brindisi for Egypt, to

begin the long exile to which he had condemned himself.

CHAPTER II.

THE STUDIO IN THE RUE D'ASSAS.

While Prince Olsdorf had gone from the sight of all who loved him, and

Vera Soublaieff, in despair, but obedient, was devoting herself at

Pampeln to the two poor little forsaken ones intrusted to her care, Mme.

Paul Meyrin found forgetfulness of the past in the love of the man she

had chosen. The memory of her children, parted from her forever,

sometimes wrung her heart; and when her mother chose, from time to time,

to send her any news of them, her eyes would fill with tears.

We may be sure, knowing her character, that Mme. Podoi never failed to

fill her letters to her daughter with reproaches and insulting

comparisons. As if to humiliate and awaken feelings of jealousy in her,

she never mentioned Vera except in the most flattering terms.

"This young girl is irreproachable," she wrote to her five or six months

after her marriage; "at Pampeln everybody loves and respects and obeys

her. No one dares raise the least doubt of her virtue, of the purity of

her relations with the prince during her stay in Paris. She is absolute

mistress at the chateau, where your name in a very short time will not

be remembered. Your son Alexander himself will forget it, and will know

only that of the woman who has become his real mother. As for Tekla, she

will probably never speak it.

"I know what is going on in Courland from that excellent Madame Bernard,

your son's governess. The prince authorized her to keep me informed

about the health of the children. You may imagine I shall not ever go

again to Pampeln. I do not want to have to blush for you.

"It is reported in St. Petersburg that Pierre Olsdorf is in Japan; but

he only writes to Vera Soublaieff. She is the only person who knows for

certain where he is.

"This is what your folly has brought my dream of ambition to. May God

grant that no worse misfortunes are in store for you."

When poor Lise had received one of these letters, in which her mother

was thus pitiless, she kept it from her husband, for he might have

forbidden the correspondence, but she would hurry to Mme. Daubrel, who

wept and did her best to console her. Then she would return to the Rue

d'Assas, and a kiss from Paul would bring her calmness. The love of the

ex-Princess Olsdorf for the man whose name she now bore was unchanged;

she was still passionately attached to this man, to whom she had yielded

so completely from the first hour.

Nor had Paul Meyrin changed; he was still the lover he had been. Lise

was his adored, intoxicating, and extravagant mistress yet. Proud of the

beauty and the distinguished air of his wife, he took her everywhere,

and received many friends--painters, literary men, artists of all kinds,

all enthusiastic about this noble stranger who, to marry one of their

class, had given up without regret the title of princess and so high a

social position.

Lise, on her part, had neglected nothing that could win the affection of

this impressionable world, of which now she formed a part.

At first visitors came with a feeling of distrust, perhaps, too, in a

critical spirit, for they wondered how this great Russian lady would

bear herself toward them, habituated as she was to homage of every kind,

and ready, perhaps, to think that they must be only too happy to be

received by her; but in the case of each of them a few moments'

conversation with Mme. Meyrin was enough to make them think her

perfectly charming. She was simple, sweet, and anxious for the comfort

of all of them.

Excellent musician as she was, other musicians found in her a nature

able to understand them, and an executant of the first class for the

interpretation of their works. The painters soon cited her as an able

judge, and a critic both fair-dealing and kindly. As such she was looked

upon by the literary men, some of whom got into the habit of putting

their ideas before her, and asking for advice. It was not long before

the studio in the Rue d'Assas became a meeting-place of much renown. The

ex-Princess Olsdorf was happy and proud in doing the honors there.

This was the life she had pictured to herself with the man she loved,

who, thanks to her, was now becoming well known as an artist. In the

day-time, while Paul worked at some picture, the idea of which she had

inspired, Lise would sit not far from him at her embroidery, reading or

music, until the hour when the usual visitors to the studio gathered

round her to tell her the chit-chat of the Parisian day. In the

evening, if they had nobody to dinner, they would go to the theater; or

they would go out arm in arm for a short walk--only a little way, that

they might the sooner be at home and alone together again.

Full of good taste and used to luxurious surroundings from her childhood

upward, Mme. Meyrin, having engaged suitable servants, well trained in

their work, had arranged the house in charming style. Everything in it

bespoke the presence of an elegant, intelligent woman, with a care for

the comfort of those about her. She charged herself with the personal

care of the flowers that were always to be seen in the studio; and Paul

was delighted with this room, which flattered his sense of the beautiful

and the voluptuous in a way that he had not dreamed of before.

The young couple, in a word, were quite happy. All they lacked was

intercourse with their family, for Mme. Frantz nursed her wrath against

her brother-in-law and his wife. She never saw them, and it was in

secret alone, to avoid bickerings, that Mme. Meyrin, the mother, could

steal away sometimes to go and embrace her son.

The respectful and affectionate reception she met with from Lise quite

charmed the good old lady, who puzzled her brain to find a means of

bringing her children together. As yet she had failed.

The exiles of the Rue d'Assas were not without stout champions in the

Rue de Douai. First and foremost there was Mme. Daubrel. She took every

chance to sing the praises of Lise, with whom, as we have seen, she was

more intimate than ever, though she was not a guest at any of the

dinners or "At Homes." Mme. Paul Meyrin had tried in vain to persuade

Marthe to occasionally meet her other friends. She refused once for all.

"My dear Lise," she said one day, when her friend returned to the

subject, "you know how I am placed. Not wishing to give the shadow of a

pretext for malicious chatter, I am forced to deny myself the pleasure

of seeing you when you have visitors. You are merry here, you laugh and

are happy. My heart sympathizes with your joys, but they are forbidden

me. After my misfortune, I said: 'Having been guilty of a sin, I swear,

now going back to my mother's roof, to expiate the past by an exemplary

life. In America, far from me, I have a son, whom God will, perhaps, let

me see again some day; and I wish to become worthy of him.' For five

years I have had no friends but the Meyrins; I have never been inside a

theater, nor made a new friend in that time, except you. Your affection

is so sweet to me, and gives me such delight, that sometimes I reproach

myself about it as a happiness which I ought not to indulge in. Don't

press me, then, I beg of you. Besides, I think I love you more and

better when we are alone."

The answer of Marthe had touched and at the same time painfully moved

Mme. Paul Meyrin in reminding her that she too had children in another

land, who bore a name not hers, whom she was forever parted from, and

whom even the death of the father would not give back to her, whom she

might not nurse if they were sick, and whose hands would not close her

eyes as they stood weeping by her pillow at the hour of eternal parting.

The unhappy mother could then almost have cursed the divorce that had

estranged her from those she loved; but she had been careful not to

return with Mme. Daubrel to this subject, which was so full of pain for

both of them.

Happily at about this time Lise found that she was about to again become

a mother. It was a supreme consolation to her. Her husband seemed not

less delighted, and the fact made her regret still more that the efforts

were vain of Marthe and all who helped her steadily to bring about a

reconciliation with Mme. Frantz.

The good-hearted Mme. Daubrel was not left to plead alone in the Rue de

Douai Paul's cause and his wife's. There was also Mme. Meyrin, the

mother, who would have liked to kiss her son every day, and who felt

herself drawn by ties of affection to his wife. Then little Nadeje, who

remembered well the caresses and presents of the Princess Olsdorf, asked

in her simplicity how it was that she did not see this beautiful lady

any more now that they were aunt and niece. Lastly, there was a third

person, whom our readers have caught only a glimpse of at present, the

actor Dumesnil.

The old player had known the Meyrins intimately for a long time. For

several years he had given lessons in elocution to the young girls whom

Mme. Frantz taught singing; and in the artistic matinees in the Rue de

Douai he was occasionally engaged to recite a speech from the classical

dramas, which the good-natured audience, as commonly happens at such

gatherings, would warmly applaud. These were the most successful

appearances now of the former lover of Mme. Podoi, as the tragic drama

was all but banished from the Odeon.

This was the friendship with the Meyrins which had warranted Dumesnil's

presence at Lise's marriage.

Informed, as we have seen, by Mme. Podoi herself, when she was still the

Countess Barineff, of her daughter's marriage with Prince Olsdorf, the

good-hearted actor had heard nothing more of Lise while she remained in

Russia; he was barely told, and almost as a favor, of the birth of her

son Alexander, though he was his grandson; but when she came to Paris he

learned the fact from the newspapers, which had had so much to say about

her; and we may be sure that when he knew the Meyrins were visited by

her he took the earliest chance to meet her there, his daughter, whom he

had not seen for twenty years.

In the Rue de Douai, Dumesnil was at first scarcely remarked by the

young woman; but, while quite discreet in regard to the relationship

between them, he was able in the end to interest her in himself, and it

was not long before Lise began to really like, as if he were one of the

family into which she was about to enter, this old man who, though a

little ridiculous at times perhaps, was gentle, polite, well-bred, and

of good manners, and had been one of her mother's earliest associates on

the stage. For one day the Princess Olsdorf, who at the Meyrins' wished

to have her title and rank forgotten, had asked Dumesnil if he was not

at the Odeon at the time when Mme. Froment was playing there, and the

good man had replied, trying not to betray his emotion:

"Yes, Madame la Princess, I knew Madame Madeleine Froment, an actress as

clever as she was distinguished. For two years we played together in

classical pieces, and at that time, if you will forgive me for

preserving the memory of it, I often kissed you and gave you a ride on

my knee. I can assure you you were the prettiest and most adorable

little thing ever seen."

At this detail of her baby-life Lise smiled, and held out her hand to

Dumesnil; she did not ask him, however, who was M. Froment.

Instinctively, or through modesty, she thought it prudent to make no

inquiry into the past, though, indeed, she was very far from suspecting

the truth. Nevertheless, from this time forth a sincere friendship

sprung up between the princess and the old actor.

We can easily understand the interest with which Madeleine Froment's

former lover had followed the stages of Lise's divorce, the joy he had

felt in seeing her become Paul Meyrin's wife--it seemed as if in

marrying the artist his daughter were brought nearer to himself--and his

efforts to put an end to the misunderstanding between Madame Frantz and

her sister-in-law.

He did his utmost in company with Madame Daubrel to bring about a peace

between the two households. He felt there was nothing for it but that

the two young women must become friends. Then he would have no reason to

make a mystery of his visits to the Rue d'Assas, and he would thus have

the chance to see oftener still the woman to whom his paternal heart

yearned. He, so long left to himself, would be almost a family man,

meeting, as he would almost every day, after this separation of years,

the daughter whom the ambition of her mother had snatched from him.

Laid siege to in this manner, Mme. Frantz had to yield in the end. Her

husband let her know that the rupture was not only painful to him, but

prejudicial to their pocket, the ex-Princess Olsdorf having still many

acquaintances in the Russian colony, where concerts and charity fetes

were constantly being given, in which she might hinder him having any

hand.

Conquered by this argument, Mme. Meyrin's eldest daughter-in-law made up

her mind to pay a visit to the Rue d'Assas. For that matter, she was not

loath to judge for herself how far what she had heard was true of the

elegant upholstering and arrangement of her brother-in-law's house.

Lise's condition supplied Barbe with a plausible excuse for calling upon

her, though she had received with mortification the news of her being

again about to become a mother, for she had hoped that her sister-in-law

would bear no more children. One day, then, when she had been forewarned

by Mme. Daubrel, Mme. Paul Meyrin was visited by Mme. Frantz and her

husband.

The interview was as cordial and frank as possible, at any rate on the

part of Frantz and Lise. The latter was sincerely pleased at this

renewal of the friendship, and, there and then, it was agreed that the

past should be forgotten, that they should see each other regularly

twice a week, alternately at each house, and that Nadeje should come as

often as possible to the Rue d'Assas. The aunt promised to find

amusement for the dear child, and to walk with her in the Luxembourg

Gardens.

All this being settled, Mme. Paul Meyrin was anxious to do the honors of

the house to her sister-in-law, who was forced to admit the richness

and good taste of the upholstering and decorations that had been done

under Lise's directions.

When the musician's wife went into the studio it was better still; she

was dazzled for a moment by the splendor of the hangings and the marvels

of art that adorned it. Lise, understanding that for an artist the

studio is his favorite room, had let nothing be wanting, so that her

husband's might please him wholly. Before selling the mansion in St.

Petersburg she had had the artistic furniture removed to Paris, the old

furniture of the time of Henry II., exquisite in form, the arms from the

Caucasus, the Persian carpets, everything, in short, that could serve

for the Rue d'Assas; and as a consequence Paul's studio was known as one

of the handsomest and most interesting in Paris.

However, after admiring everything, Barbe left the place with envy

gnawing at her heart. Replying to Frantz, who, walking toward the Seine

with her, frankly showed his pleasure at seeing his brother so well

lodged, all she could find to say was:

"Yes, it is all very fine; but what a sum of money thrown away. Paul

can't keep on at this pace with his wife's eight hundred a year and what

he makes himself by selling a picture now and again."

To avoid a discussion which he saw would lead to no good, M. Meyrin did

not answer. His wife said no more, but she was stricken, and readier

than before to hate this stranger who surpassed her thus at every turn.

It was worse still when, three or four days afterward, she came with her

husband and daughter to dine in the Rue d'Assas. Not for the sake of

show, but simply because she loved beautiful things and had them, Lise's

table was covered with the magnificent plate which had remained her

property after the divorce and had been brought from Russia. The dinner

was exquisite, but Mme. Frantz ate scarcely anything. In vain Lise was

more charming than ever she had been toward Nadeje. The violinist's wife

chose to leave early. She pleaded indisposition, and all the way home

she kept on saying to her husband:

"If your sister-in-law imagines we can give her such dinners, she is

mistaken. Unless she wished to make little of us, she is mad, and Paul

is not much saner. But I hope, at any rate, that we shall never want for

anything, whereas your brother, especially if his wife bears him a child

every twelve months, having little now, will soon be head over ears in

debt, living in such style."

"Oh, deuce take it, you look too much on the black side of things," said

Frantz, with some show of firmness. "How can you suppose that Lise

wanted to make little of us? It is absurd. I think she is a most

charming woman. You don't like her, that is what is the matter. Give her

what sort of a dinner you please. I am sure she will see nothing in it

but kindly hospitality."

To put an end to the subject, for he did not mean to yield the point,

the musician stopped at the Opera House, under pretense of having

something to say to one of the artistes in reference to a concert, and

let his wife go home alone, which did not help to soothe her.

A few days later, when it was her turn to receive Mme. Paul Meyrin,

Barbe made an affectation of the severest simplicity, a fact which Lise

did not so much as notice, happy as she was to again set foot in the

house which had been the scene of her early love.

When in a tart voice her sister-in-law said:

"We can not make such a show here as you do. My silver is only

nickel-plated."

Lise replied, with her frank, good-natured smile:

"What does it matter? Perhaps we shall have a much pleasanter dinner

here than you had with me. All I want is your affection. I have it

again, and that is sufficient."

And taking Nadeje on her knee she slipped about her neck, kissing her,

a beautiful necklet of pearls which she herself had worn as a child; and

the young girl thanked her for it with a thousand kisses and

exclamations of joy.

At this moment M. Armand Dumesnil was announced.

Knowing that Mme. Paul Meyrin was to dine this evening with her

sister-in-law, the old comedian had got an invitation. Lise, who had

learned from Mme. Daubrel with what warmth he had always pleaded her

cause in the Rue de Douai, offered him her hand affectionately, over

which the actor bent, murmuring:

"_La place m'est heureuse a vous y rencontre._"

For this honest Dumesnil had the pleasant habit of sprinkling his

conversation with poetical excerpts. He was well versed in the classical

drama, and sometimes, perhaps, rather abused his power. He never

appeared as a guest among other visitors at the Meyrins' without saying,

like Louis XI.: "I have seated myself at the table of one of my

subjects." If he played at cards he waited impatiently for his adversary

to ask him for a heart, and would reply, "I wear not my heart on my

sleeve for daws to peck at--hem!"

The habit was quite a serious thing with him. He indulged it, posing

theatrically, even at his own home and before his own servant, old

Potais, formerly prompter at the Odeon, who, his memory too being

stuffed with passages from the classic tragedies, replied to his master

with alexandrine for alexandrine, tirade for tirade. The effect was too

ludicrous to be described.

Notwithstanding this bit of absurdity, Dumesnil, as we have seen, was an

honest fellow. He was quite moved as he took his seat near Mme. Paul

Meyrin, his daughter, his little Lise, as he kept on repeating to

himself, in bending on her covert and tender glances.

No one present suspected his paternity, any more than Lise herself did.

The old comedian was at once happy and proud of the secret he alone

held, which made the young woman dearer to him than ever. It was as if

he foreboded that the day would come when she would need his protection.

CHAPTER III.

MOTHERHOOD.

The relations now established between her sister-in-law and herself

seemed at first to fill the cup of Lise's happiness, for since her

marriage she had suffered much from the estrangement of Frantz and his

wife, partly through wounded vanity, but chiefly on account of her

affection for her husband.

She could only see in the attitude taken in the Rue de Douai a lasting

censure on her union, and knowing the plasticity of Paul's character she

feared that in time he would be affected by it, so that she rejoiced at

having dissipated the cloud. She was truly happy when she saw the whole

family return to her. Mme. Frantz's remarks, often ironical though they

were, did not trouble her a moment in her joy.

She was the first to laugh about them with Mme. Daubrel and Dumesnil. A

day rarely passed without the latter calling on her. Lise always

received him in very friendly fashion, and let no chance escape of

expressing her gratitude for the warmth he had shown in taking her part.

Notwithstanding the absurdities of the good man, she feeling a great

friendship for him, did not disguise it; and one day when she renewed

her assurance of it, offering him her hand, Dumesnil was so touched that

he could not find, to thank her with, a single one of the alexandrines

with which his memory was usually so richly loaded.

After responding respectfully to the pressure of her hand and stammering

out a few words, he was obliged to turn away on pretense of looking at a

new painting of Paul's. He had need to dry his eyes, which had filled

with tears at the affectionate welcome of his daughter, who was now won

back to him.

It would be impossible to tell the pride the old actor felt in seeing

Lise reign over this gathering of artists and literary men, most of them

celebrities in the world whose meeting-place was her drawing-room or

rather Paul's studio. He listened in admiration of her as she gave her

opinion on the last new book, the play of the previous evening, or a

lately exhibited picture. And when she took her seat at the piano to

play the most striking passages in an opera just published, how her

masterly execution ravished him!

"What a great artiste she would have been," he would say to himself at

such moments, "if her fool of a mother had not made a princess of her.

Ah, blood will show itself. She is my true daughter."

He had forgiven her the betrayal of her first husband, and thought she

was right in marrying Paul Meyrin. His fatherly love reproached his

young friend for not being oftener on his knees before this adorable

creature who had been willing to descend to his level. It was pretty

certain that at the least neglect of Lise, that good fellow Dumesnil

would grow ferocious.

The painter, in fact, seemed to think his happiness the most natural

thing in the world. He had grown used to it too quickly, never showed

any surprise at it, and of all those whom his wife charmed, he was the

least ready to recognize her many good qualities. Not that he did not

appreciate them; but perhaps a little jealousy was mingled with the

satisfaction of his pride in her; and he could have wished that his

regular visitors would occupy themselves rather less with the mistress

of the house, so that they might admire his work somewhat more.

One day at the house of an artist friend, where some people were whom he

did not know, he heard one of them ask the host:

"Do you go to Madame Paul Meyrin's? They say she is a woman of rare

ability and very distinguished."

It had ruffled him a little. So it was not to his house people came, but

to his wife's. His sister-in-law, to whom he was ill-advised enough to

repeat what had been said, did not miss the chance to say an ill-natured

thing.

"My poor Paul, you only have your deserts. You must be very

inexperienced if you think that a man can marry a fine lady, a princess,

and still be first in his own house. Ah, you haven't seen the end of

your humiliations and troubles yet."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, since you ask me, that your wife is far too elegant for her

present position. I suppose she thinks she is still in her palace at St.

Petersburg. In your studio she bears herself like a queen, surrounded by

adorers, from among whom, you may be sure, one day or other some lovers

will arise. You are but an extra serf in her eyes, my poor boy."

"You are out of your mind, Barbe. You have never forgiven Lise."

"Well, well. We shall see, we shall see."

Having thrown this first dart, Mme. Frantz went no further; but Paul

returned home that day wondering that he had not noticed until then that

he held a secondary place in the household, and thinking that it would

become him to have a reform in the matter. However, he did not think for

a moment of speaking to Lise on the subject. In the first place, he

would not have known how to make a beginning; and when, as he entered

the studio, his young wife drew him toward her by one of the passionate

glances that she always had for him, the artist, a man governed by his

sensations from moment to moment, quickly forgot the slight wound to his

vanity that his sister-in-law's words had made him feel.

For that matter, the time would have been badly chosen to think of

changes in their life, for Lise herself came to the point in regard to

the state of her health. In fact, she was now within two months of her

confinement; and she was so happy at the thought that she was about to

become the mother of a child which this time would not be taken from her

that she wished to take precautions such as previously, in like

circumstances, she had not dreamed of.

When she was _enceinte_ with Tekla she had hidden the fact up to the

last moment from coquetry; but whom should she now put herself to

inconvenience for? Was not she sure of the love of her husband? Had not

she the right to be proud of the motherhood which would fill the

sorrowful blank made by fate around her? She would not forget her absent

children, their place was always in her heart. But she would love this

sweet child with the love she bore to all three.

She was unwilling, therefore, to commit any imprudence, and once again

in her nature the mistress made way for the mother. She began by staying

away from the theater, then little by little her "At Homes" grew rarer

and were given for fewer hours, until the day came when she put aside

all that did not directly affect the event she awaited. She saw scarcely

anybody but the Meyrins, Mme. Daubrel, and Dumesnil, which pleased Paul

extremely. It looked as if he were delighted not to see his wife so

surrounded as she had been since their marriage, and as he still passed

nearly all his time beside her, as he had done then, Lise, certain that

her husband loved her more every day, was as happy as a woman could be.

In two months' time Mme. Meyrin was delivered of a daughter, to whom the

name of Marie was given. Paul, at his sister-in-law's suggestion,

advised his wife to suckle it herself.

Lise had never thought of doing so, the practice being so entirely

foreign to the custom of the world she had always lived in, but she

welcomed the proposal with joy, to please her husband for one thing,

and also because it seemed to her that her child, suckled by herself,

would belong to her the more.

She gave no thought to the slavery, so to speak, of every moment to

which she would condemn herself, nor to the sacrifices of every sort

that the part of a mother so completely accepted would entail upon her.

The truth is that Paul eagerly fastened upon the chance to take the

first step, without discussion and without seeming to act with an

object, toward those reforms which his sister-in-law was always talking

about when she was alone with him, awakening his jealousy and reminding

him of the thrifty principles of which an example had been kept before

his eyes from his infancy.

"When a woman becomes a mother," she said over and over again to him,

"she should bid farewell to coquetry and the homage which always has an

ulterior aim, of those who pay court to her. Lise is a great deal too

much of a fine lady, with her loosely knotted hair, her elegant gowns,

her low-cut bodices, her silken hose, and her profuse jewelry, which she

wears at every opportunity. Who does not know whence and from whom these

things come? They were all very well for the Princess Olsdorf. Why

should she always be reminding people that there was a time when she was

not Madame Paul Meyrin? A divorced woman is obliged to be more reserved

than other women; men, with their usual vanity, being ever ready to

believe that, as she has made one slip, she may make another. Besides,

you live in a style out of accord with your income. All these

dinner-parties and 'At Homes' will ruin you. You will have other

children besides this one, and that means money to rear them. You must

be economical, and as your wife has never been used to that, it is for

you to keep an eye on the expenditure of the house, if you don't want to

be without money one of these days."

This ill-meant though specious reasoning could not but bear fruit in a

mind as ordinary and prosaic as Paul's was. His passion for Lise had

only temporarily roused in him the instincts of a true artist. There was

always in him a substratum of the commonplace, from which he could free

himself at no time, save when his passions or his vanity got the upper

hand. As for jealousy, the pretext alone of it was used to hold him, for

he had the absolute confidence in his wife of which she was worthy in

every respect.

Thus matters were in the Rue d'Assas, without anything seeming really

changed, when, three or four months after her confinement, Lise spoke to

her husband about inviting a few of their friends. Her surprise was

great at this reply from Paul:

"What is the good of it? Let us live rather more for one another. Is it

not enough to invite our own family, Madame Daubrel and Dumesnil? In

their case you will have no need to go to expense over your dress, as

you have to at the receptions in my studio."

Mme. Meyrin at first thought she had misunderstood him, either in the

words spoken or their sense. The surprise she felt was so plainly to be

seen in her eyes that the painter, taking her in his arms, added:

"Besides, you see, I am jealous. I should like now to have you a little

more to myself. Oh, I don't want our door to be closed altogether, but

only that it should not be opened so widely as it was last year."

He had spoken the first sentences with such an accent of truth that the

poor woman, hearing in them, as it were, an echo of her most enchanting

days, pressed against her husband with a voluptuous thrill. With him and

her child by her she cared little for anything else.

Paul, however, soon grew more exacting, and his wife could not but be a

little offended at hearing him each day advise some fresh reform, now

about her dress, or even her hair, now as to the household expenses.

But, blind through her love, she obeyed. She put away the most elegant

of the dresses that she used formerly to wear, and at the same time,

like a tradesman's good little wife, she began to look after the

servants more closely.

The painter was not to stop here, however. One evening Lise had given an

"At Home" to some friends--artists and literary men they were--who

expressed surprise that, having so long ago recovered from her

confinement, she had not resumed her receptions in the old style. When

they were gone Paul said:

"I doubt whether it is quite the thing to have all these people here so

long as you are suckling Marie. You are obliged to dress, for one thing,

and that must be tiresome for you. Then again, the baby may want you

suddenly, and, you know, respectable as the part of a nurse is, it still

makes people smile a little, and may lead to pleasantries such as I

would not wish to have spoken about you."

This time Mme. Meyrin did not take pains to hide her surprise; indeed,

she expressed it with such frankness that her husband, inspired to the

brutality by remembering one of his sister-in-law's remarks, said:

"Deuce take it, my dear, you are not a princess now, and the sort of

people we know are less indulgent than the great folk of St. Petersburg.

I don't want to have people laughing at me."

It was the first time for two years--since the day, indeed, when she had

given herself so freely to him--that Lise had heard from his lips a word

that could wound her. On the contrary, up to this time it had always

seemed to be his determination to make no reference to the past. The

young woman was deeply hurt, but, making a great effort, she replied

with a smile, after a momentary silence:

"You are perhaps right, Paul. It is a very simple matter. Until Marie is

weaned I will see only our most intimate friends. Are you satisfied? You

will always love me, will you not? Our baby will be a year old, too, in

a few weeks' time now, so that we can very soon take up our old life

again. Would not you wish to, as I do?"

As she spoke Lise had put her arms around her husband's neck. Her bright

eyes and the soft pressure of her arms questioned him more than her

voice did.

"Why, of course, little woman," the painter replied, giving her quite a

fatherly kiss, and gently freeing himself from her clasp. "Meanwhile,

Miss Marie is the queen we must all bow before. Even I must come after

her. And so good-night."

So saying, he went to the little room next his studio, where he had

chosen to sleep since his wife's confinement, on the pretense that the

baby, whose cradle was near its mother's bed throughout the night,

hindered him sleeping.

Left alone, Mme. Meyrin felt a pain at her heart. She had a foreboding

of evil. Her husband's love for her had undergone a change. Affrighted

at this thought, she rose and thought of hurrying after him, but at that

moment the child awoke, and the mother, suddenly reminded of the most

sacred of duties, ran to it, took it in her arms, and, her tears

falling, began to soothe and rock it.

The unhappy truth was that, less gratified in his vanity, jealous, so to

speak, of Lise's love for her infant, and restricted in his passion,

Paul, during the past few months, had grown little by little more

indifferent about the woman who was no longer for him the mistress he

had desired ardently, rather than tenderly loved. She was no longer the

creature of radiant beauty and sculptural symmetry, seductively

attractive, and of ardent passions. She was the mother devoted to a

thousand little cares and continual obligations, which the egotism of

her husband hindered him from understanding; and sometimes her health

would fail.

The motherhood, which should have made her companionship the more dear,

was an annoyance and an obstacle for a man of his animal instincts. He

did not see his daughter's smiles; he heard only her cries, and they

irritated and troubled him at his work. Without admitting it to himself,

he had come to the pass of regarding Lise's intellectual qualities as a

drawback. Her learning, the distinction and elegance of her manners,

which formerly had flattered his vanity so much at her receptions of his

friends, now humiliated his vulgar nature, and seemed to him both

useless and absurd. He often left home in consequence to seek elsewhere

the life from which he had been absent only temporarily, in a kind of

exile, a sort of flight into higher regions for which he was not born.

There was at all times a trait of character native to him which the

intoxication of passion had been able to master, while leaving him

incapable of understanding what concerns the soul.

Mme. Meyrin had the instinct rather than the feeling of a change in the

man she loved as she had always loved him; but in finding that he at

times returned to her with the passionate transports of former times she

lost her fears, and even blamed herself for ever having felt them.

So they went on for some months. Then, soon, after these momentary

revivals of passion, Paul grew more and more of a grumbler--more and

more ready to criticise and find fault in trifling things. Lise feared,

then, that her happiness was threatened--above all, when his absence

became habitual.

On pretense of helping to paint, in company with two brother artists, in

a studio of the Boulevard Monceau, a panorama, he said he was forced to

give up the greater part of his time to his work. Lise believed him; but

for her the days were endless, notwithstanding that she had her baby. As

when, of an evening, she asked Paul how the work was getting on, he made

scarcely any answer, she soon gave over asking him, and accepted this

painful loneliness, though her pride began to revolt, while jealousy

gnawed at her heart.

However, too proud to complain, Mme. Meyrin addressed no reproach to

her husband; and when Mme. Frantz, who visited her at long intervals,

complimented her on the simplicity of her dress and the quiet style of

her house, she had strength enough to betray nothing of her humiliation.

She tried to hide the truth even from Mme. Daubrel and Dumesnil, but

they loved her too much to be blind to it long. Lise, when one day she

was affectionately questioned, had to tell them all.

For some months Marthe had seen quite well what was going on.

Nevertheless, she did her best to reassure her friend, saying that she

had exaggerated the truth; most likely Paul was anxious about the

artistic enterprise he was engaged in, and on account of it alone these

changes appeared in his character and his mode of life.

Dumesnil, who had often been surprised at meeting Paul so seldom in his

studio, backed up all that Marthe said, and, wanting to allay the young

woman's fears at any cost, he said, laughing at and scolding her too a

little:

"Come, come, my dear child, you must not be raising specters and falling

into despair so quickly. How could you think for a moment that Paul is

forgetting or deceiving you? Don't believe it. He is young; he must have

fresh air and exercise. Besides

"Il est bon qu'un mari nous cache quelque chose,

Qu'il soit quelquefois libre et ne s'abaisse pas

A nous rendre toujours compte de tous ses pas."

(A husband should have something to conceal from us. He should have his

liberty at times, and not stoop to render account of every step he

takes.)

"I am not the wife of Polyeucte, and I don't love Severe," said Lise,

with a sad smile at this quotation by the old actor; "and I fear it is

not God that my husband prefers to me. But perhaps you are both right;

no doubt I take fright without cause. Come, let us speak no more of it.

You won't forsake me, will you? I don't know what would become of me if

you did."

Mme. Daubrel's reply to her friend took the form of a tender embrace,

and Dumesnil's a kiss upon the two hands that Mme. Meyrin offered him.

Alas! the evil was worse than Marthe and the old comedian had feared;

for a few days afterward, while Paul was away from home, Lise received

the following letter:

"If you want to know how your husband employs his

time, all you have to do is to make inquiries at 37

Boulevard Clichy, his new studio, where the handsome

Sarah Lamber, your former rival, passes all her time."

At reading these terrible lines, Mme. Meyrin turned deathly pale. She

uttered no cry and shed no tear, but, quickly regaining her self-command

she, with strange energy, put on her bonnet, slipped over her

dressing-gown a furred mantle, went into the studio and took a revolver

which she knew was loaded, and calling the first cab she saw on leaving

the house, she told the driver to take her to the address she had just

received.

In her trembling hands, which she had not taken the time to glove, she

crumpled the accursed letter, read and reread it; she went over it

letter by letter, as if to gather the more anger and indignation from

it.

If Prince Olsdorf had seen the infamous letter he would have recognized

the vulgar scrawl of the handwriting. It was plainly from the hand that,

three years before, had addressed to him at St. Petersburg a letter

forwarding clippings from some newspapers to tell him of his dishonor.

CHAPTER IV.

SARAH'S REVENGE.

In view of the customary indiscretion of the world into which Paul had

made his re-entry some months before, under conditions that would have

been so hard to explain, the wonder was that his wife had not been told

of his conduct sooner. In fact, among the brother artists whom Lise's

husband met every day, were several of the visitors to the Rue d'Assas.

All had kept silence--some out of indulgence for escapades such as they

had often been guilty of themselves, and others out of respect for the

wife deceived in so cowardly a manner.

Had it been otherwise, Mme. Meyrin, on the alert from the first, would

doubtless have revolted, and would not, by yielding point after point,

have encouraged her husband in, as it were, a disposition which some day

would make him look upon unfaithfulness as his right.

In that case perhaps she would easily have regained possession of the

fugitive, who had only the courage of the weak; that kind of energy in

evil-doing which consists in not daring to acknowledge a fault, through

cowardice, and in fear of deserved reproaches, or through vanity, from

fear of being humbled: just as if, between two lovers, the guilty one

did not rise the higher for imploring pardon.

Lise would have pardoned, for if at the time when Paul began to forget

his duty the news of his inconstancy had surprised her in her easy

security and full happiness, so, too, it would have done in the full

tide of love; and her heart would have pleaded the cause of the

unfaithful one. The wound might have been the more painful, but the

loving woman would have been nerved by the shock to struggle and win

back her rights.

Now it was not so. The neglected wife suffered as much in her pride as

her love. To see the calmness she was able to command after a single

moment of despair, it seemed that she was thinking more of avenging the

outrage than of bewailing the betrayal.

He had lied to her--so devoted, and frank, and loyal. He preferred a

girl of the town to the woman who had so freely and completely abandoned

herself to him. And this had been going on for months--for months she,

the daughter of the Countess Barineff, the ex-Princess Olsdorf, the

former queen of Pampeln, the great lady whom the most brilliant noblemen

had paid court to--she had been an object of scorn or pity for her

husband's boon companions.

This husband, too, his lips still warm with another woman's kisses, had

returned to her, seeking her legitimate kisses, and telling her that he

loved her. At these thoughts her soul trembled with horror and her body

shuddered with disgust.

She had no fixed purpose in going to the Boulevard Clichy either as to

what she should do or what she should say. The one purpose in her mind

was not to be for a day longer the plaything of a man for whose sake she

had sacrificed everything.

From time to time amid these thoughts there rose another, through one of

the changes frequent in lofty souls which are slow to believe in evil.

What if she had been duped--if this letter were a lie, a calumny? Then,

through her tears--tears of love and indignation at one and the same

time--she read again the vile lines, and would no longer doubt.

This shameful letter, without a name to it, spoke the truth only too

well.

Two or three weeks after this wife's confinement, at the time when he

was timidly beginning to initiate some of the reforms advised by his

sister-in-law, Paul Meyrin, whose brother artists came to see him less

often than formerly, took to visiting their studios. When he was not

under the influence of Mme. Frantz's ideas he was ill at ease at home,

embarrassed, and ashamed of himself. The gentle obedience Lise showed to

his slightest wishes, the pains she took to be nothing more than a

middle-class mother of a family, the simplicity of her dress--all caused

him a vague remorse; while his vanity, though he did not acknowledge it

to himself, made him regret something of the past. As, however, as much

through weakness as pride, he dared not recall what he had said, he

absented himself from home.

At first it was strange to him to find himself again within the

surroundings he had left three years before. He returned to them with

the hesitation and surprise that a traveler feels when after a long

absence he sees again places the language of which is no longer familiar

to him, and the customs have been forgotten. He very soon found the old

pleasure in the gossip, the freedom, and the movement of these studios,

recalling to him, as they did, a merry and careless time.

Every day he met some former comrade, models he had employed, women who

had posed before him. Some of them, indeed, had been his mistresses. He

was received everywhere with open arms and heart. Old times were talked

over, a jest was made of everybody and everything, time was killed by

working a little. At these times Paul Meyrin forgot, for hours together,

that he was a husband and a father. He quickly grew enamored again of

the easy life he had lived before he went to Russia.

However, after these trespasses, the painter was none the less exact in

returning home; indeed, after a day when he had been most forgetful of

his home he was commonly so affectionate and attentive to Lise, as

though he felt the need of excusing himself to himself, that she had not

the shadow of a suspicion.

If things had gone no further, Paul's escapades would have been nothing

more than venial sins; but he soon launched out into greater depths. He

happened to meet Sarah Lamber one afternoon at the studio of one of his

painter friends, Robert Aubrey. She was posing, half nude, for a Phryne,

which the tenant of the studio intended sending in to the next

exhibition.

Paul Meyrin had not seen the young woman again until now since the day

when, breaking off abruptly with her, he had sacrificed her for the

sake of the Princess Olsdorf, on the arrival of the latter in Paris.

We know how Sarah Lamber took her revenge by sending to Prince Pierre

the denunciation, supported by a score of newspaper clippings, which had

come as a surprise on him at Pampeln, where he was, nothing doubting his

wife. But this hateful action had turned to the confusion of Paul's

former mistress, since it had ended, instead of in the bloody drama

that, perhaps, in her anger she had hoped for, with the divorce of the

princess and her marriage with her lover--that is, in the happiness of

both of them; or, at least, so she must suppose.

After this piece of deceit Sarah, enraged at her own non-success, was

careful not to boast of what she had done, or ever to speak of Paul

Meyrin, except to congratulate herself on having nothing more in common

with such a man--an artist without talent, mind, or future, and good for

nothing better than to be the husband of a repudiated woman; and she had

avoided going into public places, such as the theaters, where she would

have been likely to see him.

Nevertheless, no matter what indifference she affected when mention was

made in her presence of the household in the Rue d'Assas and its

charming "At Homes," she never forgot her old lover, for she had really

loved him; and when she heard in the studios she posed in that the

painter was often visiting several of his artist friends, her dream was

to meet him again. With what end in view? She did not define it. Perhaps

it was simply to pick a quarrel with him, and to make him think, by some

violent outburst, that she had always been laughing at him and his fancy

for her; and perhaps it was to try, if the chance offered, to set a trap

for him, in which he would let himself be taken as of old.

Sarah, therefore, was not really surprised to see Paul walk into Robert

Aubrey's studio; but for all that she made a gesture of offended

modesty, wrapping her shoulders in the light and transparent drapery

which had covered her only to the hips, and exclaiming:

"So, so, people are to come in here as if it were a market-hall. Very

well, then, I have done. I won't pose before strangers."

And jumping down from the model's table, she ran behind the screen where

her things were, for, as is well known, a woman who poses, nude as she

may stand while the painter is at his work, and, perhaps, before ten or

a dozen artists at a time, will neither undress nor dress before any of

them.

Paul Meyrin stood on the threshold of the room, struck with surprise

first at this unexpected meeting and the young woman's exclamation, and

then at her beauty, which had never seemed more dazzling to him.

After this momentary hesitation, natural enough in the circumstances, he

approached the master of the house, who laughingly accepted his

apologies, while two other brother artists, Gaston Briel and Raoul

Martel, whom he offered his hand to in turn, jested aloud on the flight

of the model _ad salices_.

Sarah, from her hiding-place, replied to them in a sharp and biting

tone, which caused Paul strange emotion.

A few minutes later she appeared completely dressed, and said to M.

Meyrin, going up to him:

"My good sir, when you are coming here just send Robert word, and I will

go somewhere else."

"Bah!" said Paul, affecting not to take her words seriously, "is that

the way with us, my dear Sarah? I really thought you had more sense.

Have you still a grudge against me?"

"Oh, why should I have a grudge against you, pray?" said the model,

twisting up her hair with a movement full of grace, which showed the

fine proportions of a bust that Lise's husband had not forgotten. "Thank

goodness the past has been dead and buried this long while. It is just

because I don't want to be reminded too much of days of misery that I am

not anxious to fall across you. So it seems you are growing tired of

family life and brats. The deuce! A honey-moon does not last forever,

especially when one has used up the first week of it in advance.

Besides, you see, princesses are much the same as other women. As soon

as you marry them they begin to be a weight upon your shoulders, until

they transfer it to your forehead. Raoul, are you coming? As for you,

Robert, you will let me know in advance when you are going to have

troublesome visitors. If not, you can get a fine lady to pose until you

finish your Phryne, supposing you can find one handsome enough to serve

as a model."

Having caught hold of Martel's arm, whom this little scene amused as

much as it did his friends, though he was just now the favored lover,

Sarah dragged him off, having made a formal bow to the husband of the

ex-Princess Olsdorf as she got to the door.

Paul returned the bow with a similar one, and exclaimed, turning to his

brother artists:

"There is a reception for you. The deuce! Our friend Sarah nurses

malice."

"Or love still," retorted Robert Aubrey, leaving his easel. "If you had

dropped her for another girl of the same sort, she would have forgotten

and forgiven you long ago; but you gave her up to get married--to a

princess, too; and, better still, an adorable and beautiful woman."

"How satisfied she must be at this moment with the little scene just

over," said Gaston Briel, in his turn. "Guessing she would meet you some

day, she had her course ready marked out. She is a splendid girl, is

Sarah, but a little mad-headed. Besides, it is highly probable that she

may be in love with you still."

"I could swear it," said Robert. "Girls of her sort who no longer care

for a man are always good souls with their former lovers; they are

ready to offer their hand, and are the first to laugh at their old

passion. I conclude from this, my dear fellow, that Sarah adores you

still. One of these days we shall have the door of your studio shut in

our faces by her."

"Of my studio," replied Paul, laughing. "That would be pretty difficult.

You know it is one of my suite of rooms."

As he was less easy in this discussion than he wished to seem, the

painter adroitly turned the conversation, and they began talking of

other things.

In the evening Paul returned home, his mind, or rather his senses, full

of the thought of Sarah. Three months afterward, events proved that

Robert Aubrey had not been mistaken. After several stormy, angry, or

ironical meetings, after a thousand sharp things had been said on either

side, Paul and Sarah had opened their arms to each other, and their

passion had riveted them together anew.

In enjoying again with his former mistress the voluptuous intoxications

that had been lacking so long, the artist had also taken again to the

freedom of bearing, the vulgar ease of manner, the gross flashes which,

native to him, were things unknown in the Rue d'Assas. He found the

change charming, new, and exciting. His old tastes had returned to him.

He was tired of the elegance, the distinction, and the intellectual

qualities of his wife. It was the old, old story of satiation with good

things.

Paul Meyrin's renewed relations with Sarah were restricted for a time to

meetings at his friends' houses and appointments at her place; but soon

she begged the painter to take a studio in addition to and apart from

his home. He yielded to her wish, delighted at being able to live again,

though it were but intermittently, the life of the past.

He became the tenant of a studio on the Boulevard Clichy, which he

furnished very elegantly, thanks to the good taste he had learned from

Lise, and by dismantling somewhat his rooms in the Rue d'Assas, under

pretense of offering a picture or a work of art to a charity sale, or a

handsome weapon to some comrade. Then he invented the story of the work

on a panorama, as suggested by his mistress, so that he might not have

the trouble of imagining a new lie every day to account for his absence.

Matters being thus arranged, Paul Meyrin, who could not pass all his

afternoons in the arms or at the knees of Sarah, began work on a picture

the subject of which was Cleopatra awaiting Marc Antony.

At the end of two months, in spite of the interruptions that the model

was the cause of the painter making, the picture was well advanced and

promised to be one of the best by a man whose brush his passions plainly

often guided. His love for Sarah did not hinder him from sometimes

returning to his wife, by way of contrast. The wretched man, lost to all

moral reserve, liked to think at such moments that he was a successful

lover.

But Sarah, jealous and envious too, before long suspected these

legitimate infidelities. Her hate of Mme. Meyrin grew, and, caring only

to work mischief between man and wife, one morning she sent to the Rue

d'Assas the unsigned letter which was certain to effect her purpose.

After this infamous and cowardly action she went gayly to the studio

where, like the female Machiavelli she was, she seemed tenderer than

ever. She desired that that night, when his wife would denounce his

infidelity, Paul should be still under the charm of her, his mistress's

ardent caresses.

Meanwhile she was posing as Cleopatra, whom the painter represented

nude, reclining on a lion's skin, and braiding pearls in her raven hair.

Sarah was in these circumstances a marvelously beautiful creature, made

without a fault. Her rosy flesh had here and there the gleam of pale

amber. Her splendid arms, raised above the head, gave her breast the

firmness of marble; a lascivious smile parted her sensual lips; her

great eyes, the eyelids slightly darkened, glittered with a look full of

luxurious promise.

The painter, in admiration, often lowered his brush to gaze at the

model; then would apply himself feverishly to the work.

Suddenly Sarah started up, exclaiming:

"Paul, your wife."

The door of the studio had opened; Mme. Meyrin stood on the threshold.

The artist, turning to her, grew livid.

Without casting a look on her husband, Lise walked to the sofa on which

the model's things were tossed in a heap, pushed them with her foot

toward the owner and said, with a scornful gesture:

"Dress and go."

"Madame," replied Sarah, in a rebellious tone, covering herself as well

as she could with some of the gilded drapery of the couch of the Queen

of Egypt, "this is not your house."

"Monsieur Meyrin's house is the house, too, of his legitimate wife, who

drives forth from it his mistress. Go, I tell you, or I will kill you."

She drew from her bosom the revolver she had laid hands on in her

husband's studio, and took aim at the young girl, who flung herself

back, uttering a scream of fear. Mme. Meyrin's calmness was terrifying.

Recovering himself, Paul, in affright, rushed to her to put an end to

the horrible scene. Lise would not let him speak a word.

"Monsieur," she said, pointing the pistol at him, "an article in the

French Code excuses, it seems, the murder by the husband of an

adulterous wife found in her sin; perhaps it would excuse equally, in a

similar case, the murder of the husband by his wife. I forbid you to

speak a word to me before this creature has gone."

The painter was not a coward; but he stopped suddenly. Lise's face

bespoke implacable determination. She seemed the incarnation of that

unconquered Slavonic race to which he thought she owed her descent.

"This creature," retorted Sarah, who had taken advantage of the moment

of respite that Mme. Meyrin had allowed, and had caught up her clothes

in her bare arms, "this creature! You took away her lover and made him

yours. She took your husband. We are quits."

With a spring firing this Parthian shot, she disappeared through a

masked door that led into a room adjoining the studio.

At this merciless outrage Mme. Meyrin sunk into a chair, hiding in her

hands the flush of shame that had surged to her face. She, the Countess

of Barineff, the ex-Princess Olsdorf, had come to the pass of bandying

taunts with a painter's model! To this point had her love brought her

for a man of a lower social condition than her own. She recalled, too,

the miserable part she had had to play in the Rue Auber when she had had

to be a witness against her innocent husband of his alleged adultery,

and the tears of humiliation that had streamed from her eyes.

Suddenly she shuddered and sprung up as if at the touch of some unclean

thing.

Her husband, kneeling at her feet, had said, as he tried to take her

hands:

"Why did you come? Forgive me, Lise."

"Oh, leave me," she cried, repulsing him in horror. "I despise more than

I hate you. This year and more you have been lying to me. God is

punishing me cruelly for the love I felt for you. You were here hour

after hour while, watching over our child, my thoughts were yours alone

and wholly. The happiness I tried to give you was insufficient; you must

have other tendernesses than mine. With me inspiration failed you;

another woman's kisses could restore it."

As she spoke in a quick, broken voice, Lise was pacing up and down the

studio. Her excitement grew with every word. Her open mantle allowed a

glimpse of the slight costume under which her heart was beating as if it

would break.

Thus she came before the picture which represented the daughter of the

Ptolemies under the form and features of Sarah; and she exclaimed as

much in grief as in wounded pride:

"I, too, once posed nude before you. My love urged me to that

shamefullness. Well, then, Monsieur Paul Meyrin, do you need only girls

of her sort as models? Am not I beautiful enough to serve your purpose?

Come, take your brush; go on with your work."

Flinging away her furred mantle, tearing open with trembling hands her

silken dressing-gown, loosening with a movement of the head her

luxuriant hair which fell in a golden flood over her shoulders, Lise

Barineff sprung toward the couch that Sarah Lamber had occupied a few

minutes ago.

Then, when she had reached it, she added, superb and quivering, fixing

with her steely look the husband who stood dumb, motionless and

overcome:

"Well! I am waiting."

But the unhappy woman was at the end of her strength, for, suddenly,

with a cry of agony she bent backward and fell senseless to the ground.

Paul rushed toward her, took her in his arms, and through a feeling of

delicacy surprising enough in him, carried her to a sofa instead of

laying her on the couch used by the model.

In a few minutes Mme. Meyrin regained her senses and, recalling what had

just passed, she seemed to have quite regained her calmness. She knotted

up her hair, wrapped herself in her mantle, and said to her husband, who

was hanging eagerly about her and wished to oppose her going:

"I need no help from you. It was a momentary, bodily weakness. It is

enough for me to have come here, without staying. I shall not forget the

depths I have lowered myself to through you. In the Rue d'Assas you will

never again find a wife, but the mother alone of your daughter. Farewell

or not, as it pleases you."

And with a commanding gesture, forbidding him to accompany her, she went

from the room.

CHAPTER V.

DIVORCE--SEPARATION.

For Mme. Paul Meyrin the days that followed this horrible scene in the

Boulevard Clichy were very wretched.

Returning home in an indescribable state of sorrow and abasement,

wounded in her pride as much as in her love, blushing at not having

withstood with greater dignity the blow that had struck her, she refused

to see anybody, even Mme. Daubrel and Dumesnil.

That evening when these faithful friends called, they were told that the

mistress of the house was unwell and was lying down. She would not have

them read the trace of suffering in her face; nor did she wish to

sadden, by the tale of her sorrows, these two devoted hearts, resolved

as she was to be silent and to drink to the dregs the cup of bitterness

to which she had set her lips.

The next morning when Paul, refusing to take any denial, made his way

almost by force into her bedroom, Lise took her child in her arms as if

to make of it against her husband an impassable barrier, so that he

should understand that the betrayed wife took refuge wholly in her

maternal love. In vain he tried, piling lie upon lie, to excuse his

fault; in vain he supplicated; he could not win a word from her. Her

only reply was ironical smiles and the devouring of her daughter with

kisses.

Humiliated at the check, for perhaps he had in his vanity imagined that

at a word from him his wife would forget everything, the painter went

away enraged. A few hours later he was with Sarah, who said:

"You are a poor sort of thing. Do you suppose I was afraid? If I ran

away it was for your sake alone, because I did not want to be the cause

of a scene which would have fetched out all the neighbors. But, you

know, we can't have any more of that sort of thing. You must be good

enough to make your choice between your wife and me. If you don't there

is an end of my posing for you. I don't want to have a bullet through my

head one of these fine days. Don't expect me any more at the Boulevard

Clichy."

As, in spite of all the efforts of her lover to make her change her

mind, the young girl was firm, Paul Meyrin was forced to go back to his

studio in the Rue d'Assas; but only to pass an occasional hour there. He

could not settle down to work tempted as he was at one moment to go and

implore his wife's pardon, at another to rush off to Sarah Lamber and

tell her he was ready to live with her.

Too weak to make up his mind to a course, bad or good, unless he was

helped to the decision by circumstances, the painter's life was idle and

feverish. He went and came among his brother artists, who had speedily

got to know of his adventure, thanks to the silly vanity of the model,

eager to tell everywhere that a woman of fashion had wished to kill her.

The story in less than twenty-four hours was the scandal of the day

among the artists. Soon the little halfpenny boulevard papers spoke of

it, and Dumesnil heard of it one evening in the greenroom at the Odeon.

That excellent man was not surprised by the news, for Paul's frequent

absences had disquieted him, but he was greatly pained by the news, and

next day went to Lise's. This time he was admitted.

Pale and with dark circles round her eyes, she was lying on a couch.

Mme. Daubrel who, knowing nothing of the truth, supposed she was simply

ill was with her and had just been telling her, with tears of joy and a

trembling voice, that her own husband, touched by her repentance, was

intending to pardon her; that almost by every post he sent from New York

to Mme. Percier, her mother, news of her son, and that perhaps very soon

she would see him again.

Mme. Meyrin, whose heart was so cruelly crushed, congratulated her

friend, happy in her hopes, and thought sorrowfully that it would never

be permitted to her to embrace her children; but when she saw Dumesnil

with a troubled look on his face she dismissed her sad thoughts, and, to

reassure him, said, smiling:

"Dear friend, nothing serious is amiss with me. In a day or two I shall

be quite well again."

"You are the bravest of women," the comedian replied, bowing to Mme.

Daubrel and taking the seat Lise had offered him; "they who do you an

injury are vile wretches."

"An injury! Why, what do you mean?"

Marthe, no more than Lise seized his thought.

Dumesnil saw by her surprise that she knew nothing, and concluding that

Mme. Meyrin wished her friend to be kept in ignorance, he went on

quickly, not picking his words very carefully:

"I express myself badly. I meant that only vile wretches would not wish

you all the happiness you deserve."

Lise was too intelligent not to guess, from the embarrassment of the old

man, that he knew what had happened between her husband and herself.

With a glance she thanked him for his discretion, and some minutes

later, when Marthe was gone, she hastened to say:

"I don't know what you have heard, but anything you can have been told

is less than the truth. Monsieur Meyrin has betrayed me so vilely that

I will not forgive him. My love for him is dead. As long as he pleases

we will live under the same roof, but as strangers to one another. A

woman of my stamp can forget neither a humiliation nor an outrage. Don't

speak to me of him, I beg you. There are only you and Marthe left to

love me."

Too much moved to speak a word, Dumesnil pressed a respectful and tender

kiss on the feverish hand that the poor betrayed woman stretched out to

him.

"And soon, too," she went on, "I shall have only you and my daughter,

for in a few months, perhaps in a few weeks, Madame Daubrel will leave

France to go to her husband in America."

"Her husband! Why, I thought they were separated by a decree?"

"It is so; and moreover, the separation was pronounced against her; but

for eight years she has so bravely expiated her fault that Monsieur

Daubrel is disposed to forgive all. Marthe has told me a fact I did not

know, that the separation lasts only as long as the man and wife wish.

It is revocable at their choice, and is annulled by the simple fact of

their voluntary reunion, without the intervention of a judge or the

accomplishment of any formality."

"That seems but right," said Dumesnil.

"Yes," said Mme. Meyrin, bitterly, "a deceived husband has the right, if

he pardons his wife, to open his house to her again, to give back his

children to her. He needs not to authorize her to bear his name anew,

since she has not ceased to bear it. By a single kiss all is wiped out.

In the case of a divorce, on the contrary, the one woman in the world

that the outraged husband can not take to his arms is she that has

betrayed him. His union with her would be illegal, irregular; the

children he might have by her would be bastards. Ah, my friend, how

unhappy am I, and what a punishment mine is."

Lise had buried her face in her hands and was weeping.

The old artist dared not try to console her, and had no thought of

defending Paul, who had made no real attempt at reconciliation with his

wife, though a week had passed since the drama of the Boulevard de

Clichy.

M. Meyrin, it is true, breakfasted and dined pretty regularly at home,

but Lise and he did not exchange a dozen words while they were at table,

and after the meal, if the painter took his wife's hand, it was lifeless

and cold in his.

And yet if Paul had had a true, spontaneous, and heartfelt impulse,

Lise, strong as she believed she was and wished to seem, would perhaps

not have resisted, for she had had for her husband one of those passions

that find excuses for the loved one from the very fact that they are not

based on admiration, esteem, and an exaltation of the soul, that is to

say, those lofty sentiments which when they disappear carry with them

all affection and leave room for duty alone.

It is not thus with passions born of desire. The attraction which has

roused them can, in contempt of all dignity, rearouse them suddenly, the

nerves being exclusively concerned in their manifestation. The heart, in

its mercifulness and goodness, can pardon while mindful of the betrayal;

the flesh has no nobility of pride; in yielding anew it forgets.

But Paul Meyrin knew nothing of these things. The coldness of his wife

humbled his foolish pride, and, thinking that he had done enough to win

her back if she desired to return, he dared make no further effort

through fear of a repulse. Very infatuated with Sarah, too, by reason of

the resistance that she offered, he grew used, little by little, to

return to the Rue d'Assas less regularly; and as he was ignorant of the

delicacy and the attentions which win pardon for so many errors in a

well-bred man, he soon ceased to mention if he was going out before

breakfast or did not intend to return for dinner. This was so often the

case that in less than a month after the miserable event that we have

related, Mme. Meyrin was for many a long hour alone with her child, her

door being closed to all but Mme. Daubrel, to whom in the end she had

told all, and Dumesnil, whose affection for her grew with every day.

Lise heard no mention made of her husband's family. Mme. Meyrin, the

mother, blamed severely her son's conduct, and dared not come to see her

daughter-in-law. As for Mme. Frantz, whose envious feelings had been the

origin of all the evil, she rejoiced in secret over the sufferings of

this foreign fine lady who had carried off her brother-in-law from her

profitable guardianship.

This isolation had a logical and fatal result, due to the temperament of

the deserted wife. An excellent mother naturally, Lise began now to

worship her children with a sort of nervous, unquiet, morbid passion,

which was not appeased by the care she wrapped her daughter in, or the

caresses she lavished on her.

It was as if she wished to avenge herself for having, for three years,

divided her heart. More than ever, from this time forward, she thought

of the absent ones. She spoke constantly of Alexander and Tekla, wept

over their absence, and hungered to see them, were it but for an hour or

a moment. These adored ones were the one subject of her talk with Marthe

and Dumesnil. In his innocent weakness for poetical citations the honest

comedian compared her with Andromache and Niobe.

Added to this, the poor woman received from her mother a letter which

increased her humiliation. Having learned at Ems, from the French

newspapers, the adventure of the Boulevard Clichy, Mme. Podoi hastened

to write to her daughter in the sharpest terms. Her letter ended with

these words:

"It is true you have the resource of a second divorce. Only, whom will

you marry? God alone knows how low you may descend."

Proving beyond a doubt to Mme. Meyrin that the heart of her mother,

pitiless in her wounded pride, was still shut against her, this harsh

letter caused her deep sorrow; but she only replied to express all the

regret she felt at not having had news of her children such as her

mother was wont to send when, from time to time, she wrote.

Then, accepting with resignation the situation that events had made for

her, she occupied herself solely with her beloved little daughter,

driving away every thought that was not of those who alone remained dear

to her. She saw her husband by chance alone, when it suited him to take

his place at table. She spoke no word of reproach to him, and even took

no interest in what became of him in his long absences. As she had said

to Dumesnil, her love for Paul was dead. The spark from which the flame

would have sprung again under the lightest breath of tenderness had died

out forever in her.

Alas! the poor lonely one was soon to be stricken in this other love

which alone now stirred her soul. Like wolves, misfortunes come in

troops. One morning she received from St. Petersburg another letter from

her mother which drew a cry of agony from her. Mme. Podoi mentioned

baldly that, having had a telegram from Vera Soublaieff that the Prince

Alexander was dangerously ill, she was starting for Pampeln with Dr.

Psaroff.

Without the loss of a moment Lise dispatched to the daughter of the

farmer of Elva a telegram imploring her to send at once, by the same

means, news of her son, and this being done, she passed the whole day in

unspeakable agony. Toward five o'clock she received Vera's answer, which

drove her nearly mad.

"The doctor, who arrived last night with Madame Podoi, refuses to

pronounce an opinion, but we hope that God will hear our prayers, and

that our care will save your son. I will send a telegram every day."

Mme. Meyrin sunk into a chair, repeating amid her sobs:

"My son, my child!"

Suddenly she rose, ran to her writing-desk, and in a trembling hand

wrote:

"Paul, my son is dying. I am going to try and save

him."

Having written these words, she rang the bell and told the servant who

answered it to put the note in M. Meyrin's room. She had not seen him

that day, and knew he was not to be home to dinner; she had heard him

say overnight that he was going to the Amiens exhibition.

At this moment Mme. Daubrel entered.

"God has sent you, Marthe. Look, read."

She gave her Mme. Podoi's letter and Vera's telegram.

"My poor friend," said Mme. Daubrel. "What will you do?"

"I shall go to Pampeln."

"To Pampeln--you?"

"Yes, I. The prince is away, and I wish to save my son. I feel that I

shall save him."

"But your husband?"

"I have no husband; I have only my children. While I am away you will

watch over my daughter, will you not? I beg it of you."

"I promise--I swear it. She shall be my daughter."

Marthe had not the courage to combat her friend's resolution. In her

motherly love, so much tried, she understood her too well.

"Then," said Mme. Meyrin, "help me. I shall not be long. There is not a

moment to lose. The train for Berlin leaves at eight o'clock. I must

catch it."

In less than half an hour, after thrusting into a valise what things

were absolutely necessary and sending a telegram to her mother

announcing her coming, Lise was ready.

"Adieu," she said to Mme. Daubrel, giving into her arms her little

daughter, whom she covered with kisses and tears. "Adieu. Pray for my

son."

A few minutes later, alone, without a servant, her veil lowered as if

she were a fugitive, the ex-Princess Olsdorf got into a cab, and told

the driver to take her to the Great Northern Railway Station.

CHAPTER VI.

LISE AND VERA.