Nadine Napraxine had just quitted her bathroom, and was taking her
chocolate, when her women, vaguely frightened and so venturing to
disobey her, brought her word that Prince Ezarhédine begged to see
her for a few moments on an urgent matter. It was noon. She was
never visible until three in the daytime in Paris. She was at first
indignant at such an insolence, then made curious by such an intrusion.
Ezarhédine had been one of her husband's familiar associates, but he
had never been an intimate friend of her own.
'What can he want?' she said irritably. 'Send M. Valisoff to him.'
Valisoff was her own secretary.
But when her servants insisted, contrary to all their usual timid
obedience to her rules, her inquisitiveness was excited; she consented
to receive the unbidden and ill-timed visit. She cast about her a
loose gown of cream-hued China crape, embroidered with pansies and
primroses, put her feet into slippers which were embroidered like it,
and with her beautiful arms seen through the loose sleeves, and her
eyes still suffused with the languor of her morning sleep, she passed
out into the small salon adjoining her dressing-chamber.
Prince Ezarhédine, ushered in there, bowed to the ground, and then
stood looking at her strangely. He was very pale, and there was a
tremor about his mouth.
'Madame,' he murmured, and then paused; his voice could not be
commanded.
She, with her wonderful and instantaneous penetration into the minds
of those who spoke to her, divined his mission in that one moment in
which his eyes met hers. She went a step nearer to him, herself looking
like some Aurora of the Italian painters, with her white floating
flower-embroidered robes and her loose hair bound by an amethyst-hued
ribbon.
'What have you come to tell me?' she said, in a strange, low voice. 'Is
my husband--dead?'
Ezarhédine bowed in silence.
She shuddered slightly from head to foot; her eyes opened wide with an
expression of great terror; her lips turned white. She sat down on the
nearest seat, and motioned to him to be seated by her.
'Has he fought with Othmar?' she said hoarsely, so low that her words
were scarcely intelligible.
'With Othmar? No, madame,' Ezarhédine answered in surprise; and told
her with whom he had fought and how he had died.
She heard in perfect silence; but the colour had returned to her lips.
* * * * *
'Poor Napraxine; he died for her sake, and it is only of Othmar that
she thought,' mused Prince Ezarhédine as he left her house when his
painful mission was over.