When Crammon saw her again she showed the exquisitely cultivated
firmness of a great lady and forced his silent admiration. And again
there began that restless burning in his heart.
He talked to her about Christian Wahnschaffe and one evening he brought
him to her. In Christian’s face there was something radiant. Adda
Castillo had drenched it with her passion. Eva felt about him the
breath of another woman and her face showed a mocking curiosity. For
several seconds the young man and the dancer faced each other like two
statues on their pedestals.
Crammon wondered whether Christian would ever thank him for this
service. He gave his arm to Susan, and the two walked to and fro in the
picture gallery.
“I hope your blond German friend is a prince,” said Susan with her air
of worry.
“He’s a prince travelling incognito in this vale of tears,” Crammon
answered. “You’ve made some stunning changes here,” he added, gazing
about him. “I’m satisfied with you both. You are wise and know the ways
of the world.”
Susan stopped and told him of what weighed upon her mind. Ivan
Michailovitch Becker came from time to time, and he and Eva would talk
together for many hours. Always after that Eva would pass a sleepless
night and answer no questions and have a fevered gleaming in her eyes.
And how was one to forbid the marvellous child her indulgence in this
mood? Yet it might hold a danger for her. No stray pessimist with
awkward hands should be permitted to drag down as with weights the
delicate vibrations of her soul. “What do you advise us to do?” she
asked.
Crammon rubbed his smooth chin. “I must think it over,” he said, “I
must think it over.” He sat down in a corner and rested his head on his
hands and pondered.
Eva chatted with Christian. Sometimes she laughed at his remarks,
sometimes they seemed strange and astonishing to her. Yet even where
she thought her own judgment the better, she was willing to hear and
learn. She regarded his figure with pleasure and asked him to get her,
from a table in the room, an onyx box filled with semi-precious stones.
She wanted to see how he would walk and move, how he would stretch
out his arm and hand after the box and give it to her. She poured the
stones into her lap and played with them. She let them glide through
her fingers, and said to Christian with a smile that he should have
become a dancer.
He answered naïvely that he was not fond of dancing in general, but
that he would think it charming to dance with her. His speech amused
her, but she promised to dance with him. The stones glittered in her
hands; a quiver of her mouth betrayed vexation and pride but also
compassion.
When she laughed it embarrassed Christian, and when she was silent he
was afraid of her thoughts. He had promised to meet Adda Castillo at
almost this hour. Yet he stayed although he knew that she would be
jealous and make a scene. Eva seemed like an undiscovered country to
him that lured him on. Her tone, her gestures, her expression, her
words, all seemed utterly new. He could not tear himself away, and his
dark blue eyes clung to her with a kind of balked penetration. Even
when her friends came--Cardillac, Wiguniewski, d’Autichamps--he stayed
on.
But Eva had found a name for him. She called him Eidolon. She uttered
that name and played with its sound even as she played with the
mani-coloured jewels in her lap.