Eva Sorel passed through the countries of Europe--a comet leaving
radiance in its wake.
Her day was thickly peopled. It needed the flexibility of an
experienced practitioner to test and grant the many-sided demands
upon her. Monsieur Chinard, her impresario, served admirably in this
capacity. Only Susan Rappard treated the man morosely. She called him
a Figaro _pris à la retraite_.
In addition, the dancer employed a courier and a secretary.
Several of her adorers had been following her from city to city for
months. They were Prince Wiguniewski, a middle-aged American, named
Bradshaw, the Marquis Vicente Tavera, of the Spanish legation at
Petrograd, Herr Distelberg, a Jewish manufacturer of Vienna, and Botho
von Thüngen, a very young Hanoverian, a student in his second year.
These, as well as others who drifted with the group from time to time,
neglected their callings, friends, and families. They needed the air
that Eva breathed in order to breathe themselves. They had the patience
of petitioners and the optimism of children. They were envious of
one another’s advantage, knowledge, and witticisms. Each noted with
malicious delight if another blundered. They vied zealously for the
friendship of Susan, and made her costly presents, in order that she
might tell them what her mistress had said and done, how she had slept,
in what mood she had awakened, and when she would receive.
Since Count Maidanoff had joined Eva’s circle they had all been
profoundly depressed. They knew, everybody knew, who was concealed
behind this pseudonym. Against him--mighty and greatly feared--no one
hoped to prevail.
Eva consoled them with a smile. They counted for nothing in her eyes.
“How are my chamberlains?” she asked Susan, “how do my time-killers
kill their time?”
But she was not quite as light and serene of soul as she had once been.
V
She had made the acquaintance of Count Maidanoff in Trouville. She
had been presented to him on the promenade, and a far-flung circle
of fashionables had looked on. Careful murmurs had blended with the
thunder of the sea.
She came home and grasped Susan by the shoulders. “Don’t let me go out
again,” she said, pale and breathing heavily. “I don’t want to look
into those eyes again. I must not meet that man any more.”
Susan exhausted herself promising this. She did not know who had
awakened such horror in her mistress. “Elle est un peu folle,” she
said to M. Labourdemont, the secretary, “mais ce grain de folie est le
meilleur de l’art.”
The next day Count Maidanoff announced his formal call, and had to be
received.
The conventional act of homage, to which he was entitled by his birth,
he repaid with a personal and sincere one.
His speech was heavy and slow. He seemed to despise the words, the use
of which caused him such exertion. Sometimes he stopped in the middle
of a sentence and frowned in annoyance. Between his eyebrows there were
two straight, deep lines that made his face permanently sombre. His
smile began with an upward curl of the lips, and quivered down into his
thin, colourless beard, like the effect of a muscular paralysis.
He went straight and without circumlocution toward his purpose. It
was commonly the office of his creatures to clear the road toward his
amatory adventures. By doing the wooing himself in this instance he
desired to single out its object by an act of especial graciousness.
The cool timidity of the dancer had pleased him at first. Fear was to
him the most appealing quality in men. But Eva’s repressed chill in the
face of his courteous proposals confused him. His eyes became empty,
he looked bored, and asked for permission to light a cigarette.
He talked of Paris, of a singer at the Grand Opera there. Then he
became silent, and sat there like some one who has all eternity ahead
of him. When he arose and took his leave, he looked as though he were
really asleep.
With arms crossed Eva walked about the room till evening. During the
night she picked up books which she did not read, thought of things
that were indifferent to her, called Susan only to torment her, wrote
a letter to Ivan Becker and tore it up again. Finally, in spite of
the driving rain, she wrapped herself in a cloak and went out on the
terrace.
Maidanoff repeated his visit. At the inevitable point Eva conveyed
to him with great delicacy that his expectations were doomed to
disappointment. He looked at her with slothful, oblique glances, and
condescended to smile. What nonsense, his morose frown seemed thereupon
to say.
Suddenly he opened his eyes very wide. The effect was uncanny. Eva bent
her head forward in expectation, and spread out her fingers.
He said: “You have the most beautiful hands I have ever seen. To have
seen them is to desire to know their touch.”
Three hours later she left Trouville, accompanied by Susan and by M.
Labourdemont, and travelled to Brussels, where Ivan Becker was staying.