"Oh!" She spread out her hands vaguely. "How can one remember?" And
that look he most disliked, that look of ancient wisdom, disillusioned
and contemptuous, came into her eyes.
"You are too young to have had so very many. And the war took a good
slice out of your life. I don't suppose you were infatuating
smashed-up men or even doctors and surgeons."
"Certainly not. But, when one marries young--and one begins to live
early in Europe."
"How often have you loved, yourself?"
"That question I could answer specifically, but I shall not."
He calculated rapidly. "Four years of war. Assuming that you are
thirty-two, although sometimes you look older and sometimes younger,
and that you married at seventeen, that would leave you--well, eleven
years before the war began. I suppose you didn't fall in love once a
year?"
"Oh, no, I am a faithful soul. Say three years and a third to each
attack."
"You talk at times singularly like an American for one who left here at
the age of two."
"Remember that my family went with me. Moreover, Mary and I always
talked English together--American if you like. She was intensely proud
of being an American. We read all the American novels, as I told you.
They are an education in the idiom, permanent and passing. Moreover, I
was always meeting Americans."
"Were you? Well, the greater number of them must be in New York at the
present moment. No doubt they would be glad to relieve your
loneliness."
"I am not in the least lonely and I have not the least desire to see
any of them. Only one thing would induce me--if I thought it would be
possible to raise a large amount of money for the women and children of
Austria."
"Ah! You would take the risk, then?"
"Risk? They were the most casual acquaintances. They probably have
forgotten me long since. I had not left Hungary for a year before the
war, and one rarely meets an American in Pesth Society--two or three
other American women had married Hungarians, but they preferred Vienna
and I preferred Europeans. I knew them only slightly. . . . Moreover,
there are many Zattianys. It is an immense connection."
"You mean you believe you would be safe," he caught her up.
"_Mon dieu_! You make me feel as if I were on the stand. But yes,
quite safe."
"And you really believe that any one could ever forget you?"
"I am not as vain as you seem to think."
"You have every right to be. Suppose--suppose that something should
occur to rouse the suspicions of the Countess Zattiany's old friends
and they should start investigations in Vienna?"
"They would not see her--nor their emissaries. Dr. Steinach's
sanitarium is inviolate."
"Steinach--Steinach--where have I heard that name lately?"
Her eyes flew open, but she lowered the lids immediately. Her voice
shook slightly as she replied: "He is a very great doctor. He will
keep poor Mary's secret as long as she lives and nobody in Vienna would
doubt his word. Investigations would be useless."
"She is there then? I suppose you mean that she is dying of an
incurable disease or has lost her mind. But do not imagine that I care
to pry further into that. I never had the least idea that you had----
Oh, I don't know what to believe! . . . Won't you ever tell me?"
"I wonder! No, I think not! No! No!"
"There is something then?"
"Do you know why you still harp on that absurd idea that I am what I am
and still am not? Do you not know what it is--the simple explanation?"
"No, I do not."
"It is merely that European women, the women who have been raised in
the intrigues of courts and the artificialities of what we call 'the
World,' who learn the technique of gallantry as soon as they are
_lancée_, where men make a definite cult of women and women of men,
where sincerity in such an atmosphere is more baffling than subtlety
and guile--that is the reason your American girl is never understood by
foreign men--where naturalness is despised as gauche and art commands
homage, where, in short, the game is everything--that most aristocratic
and enthralling of all games--the game of chess, with men and women as
kings, queens, pawns. . . . There you have the whole explanation of my
apparent riddle. You have never met any one like me before."
"There are a good many women of your class here now."
"Yes, with avowed objects, is it not? And they do not happen to
possess the combination of qualities that commands your interest."
"That is true enough. Perhaps your explanation is the real one. There
is certainly something in it. Well, I'll go now. I have kept you up
long enough."
He was about to raise her hand to his lips when she surprised him by
shaking his warmly.
"I must get over that habit. It is rather absurd in this country where
you have not the custom. But you will come again?"
"Oh, yes, I'll come again."