The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

Thereupon she made a mocking curtsey, and turned on her heels and disappeared.

"The woman is absolutely mad," said Antoinette. "Abel will be here in a few minutes, and he will tell me what is the matter with her. I supposed they quarrelled last night about Poland. Oh dear, what funny old women there are in the world!"

As she was waiting for her lover to appear, Camille Langis came to the house. Naturally, she was not desirous of talking with her rejected suitor at that moment, and she gave him a rather frigid welcome.

"I see you don't want me," said Camille sadly, turning away.

"Of course I want you," she said, touched by the feeling he showed. "You are my oldest and dearest friend."

For a few minutes, they sat talking together, and Camille noticed the strange bracelet on her wrist, and praised its curious design. Antoinette, struck by a sudden idea, took off the Persian ornament, and gave it to Camille, saying:

"One of these plates, I believe, opens by a secret spring. You are an engineer, can you find this spring for me?"

"The middle plate is hollow," said Langis, tapping it with a pen-knife, "the other two are solid gold. Oh, what a clumsy fool I am! I have broken it open."

"Is there any writing?" said Antoinette. "Let me look."

Yes, there was a long list of dates, and at the end of the dates were written: "Nothing, nothing, nothing, that is all. Anna Gulof."

Antoinette became deathly pale; something seemed to break in her head; she felt that if she did not speak, her mind would give way. Yes, she could trust Camille, but how should she begin? She felt that she was stifling, and could not draw in enough air to keep breathing.

"What is the matter with you, dear Antoinette?" said Camille, alarmed by her pallor and her staring eyes.

She began to speak in a low, confused and broken voice, and Camille at first could not understand what she was saying. But at last he did so, and his soul was then divided between an immense pity for the grief that overwhelmed her, and a ferocious joy at the thought of the utter rout of his successful rival. Suddenly a step was heard on the garden path.

"Here he is," said Antoinette. "No, stay in here. I will call you if I want you. In spite of all I have said I shall never believe that he has deceived me unless I read the lie in his very eyes."

Instead of waiting for the visitor to be shown into her room, she ran out, and met him in the garden. He came up to her smiling, thinking that with the departure of Princess Gulof, all danger had vanished. But when he saw the white face and burning eyes of Antoinette, he guessed that she knew everything. He determined, however, to try and carry it off by sheer audacity.

"I am sorry I left so early last evening," he said, "but that mad Russian woman, whom I took into dinner, made me almost as crazy as she was herself. She ought to be in an asylum. But the night repaid me for all the worries of the evening. I dreamt of the Engadine, its emerald lakes, its pine-trees, and its edelweiss."

"I, too, had a dream last night," said Antoinette slowly. "I dreamt that this bracelet which you gave me belonged to the mad Russian woman, and that she had engraved her name inside it." She threw the bracelet at him. He picked it up, and turned it round and round in his trembling fingers, looking at the plate which had been forced open.

"Can you tell me what I ought to think of Samuel Brohl?" she asked.

The name fell on him like a mass of lead; he reeled under the blow; then, striking his head with his two fists, he answered:

"Samuel Brohl is a man worthy of your pity. If you only knew all that he has suffered, all he has dared to do, you could not help pitying him, yes, and admiring him. Samuel Brohl is an unfortunate ..."

"Scoundrel," she said in a terrible voice. "Madame Brohl!"--she began to laugh hysterically--"Madame Brohl! No, I can't become Madame Brohl. Ah! that poor Countess Larinski."

"You did not love the man," he said bitterly; "only the Count."

"The man I loved did not tell lies," she replied.

"Yes, I lied to you," he said, panting like a hunted animal, "and I take all the shame of it gladly. I lied because I loved you to madness; and I lied because you are dearer to me than honour; I lied because I despaired of touching your heart, and I did not care by what means I won you. Why did I ever meet you? Why couldn't I have passed you by, without you becoming the dream of my whole life? I have lied. Who would not lie to be loved by you?"

Never had Samuel Brohl appeared so beautiful. Despair and passion lighted up his strange green eyes with a sombre flame. He had the sinister charm of a fallen archangel, and he fixed on Antoinette a wild, fascinating glance, that said:

"What do my name, my deceptions and the rest, matter to you? My face at least is not a mask, and the man who moved you, the man who won you, was I."