Artist and Model (The Divorced Princess)

(A husband should have something to conceal from us. He should have his liberty at times, and not stoop to render account of every step he takes.)

"I am not the wife of Polyeucte, and I don't love Sévère," said Lise, with a sad smile at this quotation by the old actor; "and I fear it is not God that my husband prefers to me. But perhaps you are both right; no doubt I take fright without cause. Come, let us speak no more of it. You won't forsake me, will you? I don't know what would become of me if you did."

Mme. Daubrel's reply to her friend took the form of a tender embrace, and Dumesnil's a kiss upon the two hands that Mme. Meyrin offered him.

Alas! the evil was worse than Marthe and the old comedian had feared; for a few days afterward, while Paul was away from home, Lise received the following letter:

At reading these terrible lines, Mme. Meyrin turned deathly pale. She uttered no cry and shed no tear, but, quickly regaining her self-command she, with strange energy, put on her bonnet, slipped over her dressing-gown a furred mantle, went into the studio and took a revolver which she knew was loaded, and calling the first cab she saw on leaving the house, she told the driver to take her to the address she had just received.

In her trembling hands, which she had not taken the time to glove, she crumpled the accursed letter, read and reread it; she went over it letter by letter, as if to gather the more anger and indignation from it.

If Prince Olsdorf had seen the infamous letter he would have recognized the vulgar scrawl of the handwriting. It was plainly from the hand that, three years before, had addressed to him at St. Petersburg a letter forwarding clippings from some newspapers to tell him of his dishonor.

CHAPTER IV.
SARAH'S REVENGE.

In view of the customary indiscretion of the world into which Paul had made his re-entry some months before, under conditions that would have been so hard to explain, the wonder was that his wife had not been told of his conduct sooner. In fact, among the brother artists whom Lise's husband met every day, were several of the visitors to the Rue d'Assas. All had kept silence—some out of indulgence for escapades such as they had often been guilty of themselves, and others out of respect for the wife deceived in so cowardly a manner.

Had it been otherwise, Mme. Meyrin, on the alert from the first, would doubtless have revolted, and would not, by yielding point after point, have encouraged her husband in, as it were, a disposition which some day would make him look upon unfaithfulness as his right.

In that case perhaps she would easily have regained possession of the fugitive, who had only the courage of the weak; that kind of energy in evil-doing which consists in not daring to acknowledge a fault, through cowardice, and in fear of deserved reproaches, or through vanity, from fear of being humbled: just as if, between two lovers, the guilty one did not rise the higher for imploring pardon.

Lise would have pardoned, for if at the time when Paul began to forget his duty the news of his inconstancy had surprised her in her easy security and full happiness, so, too, it would have done in the full tide of love; and her heart would have pleaded the cause of the unfaithful one. The wound might have been the more painful, but the loving woman would have been nerved by the shock to struggle and win back her rights.

Now it was not so. The neglected wife suffered as much in her pride as her love. To see the calmness she was able to command after a single moment of despair, it seemed that she was thinking more of avenging the outrage than of bewailing the betrayal.

He had lied to her—so devoted, and frank, and loyal. He preferred a girl of the town to the woman who had so freely and completely abandoned herself to him. And this had been going on for months—for months she, the daughter of the Countess Barineff, the ex-Princess Olsdorf, the former queen of Pampeln, the great lady whom the most brilliant noblemen had paid court to—she had been an object of scorn or pity for her husband's boon companions.

This husband, too, his lips still warm with another woman's kisses, had returned to her, seeking her legitimate kisses, and telling her that he loved her. At these thoughts her soul trembled with horror and her body shuddered with disgust.

She had no fixed purpose in going to the Boulevard Clichy either as to what she should do or what she should say. The one purpose in her mind was not to be for a day longer the plaything of a man for whose sake she had sacrificed everything.

From time to time amid these thoughts there rose another, through one of the changes frequent in lofty souls which are slow to believe in evil. What if she had been duped—if this letter were a lie, a calumny? Then, through her tears—tears of love and indignation at one and the same time—she read again the vile lines, and would no longer doubt.

This shameful letter, without a name to it, spoke the truth only too well.

Two or three weeks after this wife's confinement, at the time when he was timidly beginning to initiate some of the reforms advised by his sister-in-law, Paul Meyrin, whose brother artists came to see him less often than formerly, took to visiting their studios. When he was not under the influence of Mme. Frantz's ideas he was ill at ease at home, embarrassed, and ashamed of himself. The gentle obedience Lise showed to his slightest wishes, the pains she took to be nothing more than a middle-class mother of a family, the simplicity of her dress—all caused him a vague remorse; while his vanity, though he did not acknowledge it to himself, made him regret something of the past. As, however, as much through weakness as pride, he dared not recall what he had said, he absented himself from home.

At first it was strange to him to find himself again within the surroundings he had left three years before. He returned to them with the hesitation and surprise that a traveler feels when after a long absence he sees again places the language of which is no longer familiar to him, and the customs have been forgotten. He very soon found the old pleasure in the gossip, the freedom, and the movement of these studios, recalling to him, as they did, a merry and careless time.

Every day he met some former comrade, models he had employed, women who had posed before him. Some of them, indeed, had been his mistresses. He was received everywhere with open arms and heart. Old times were talked over, a jest was made of everybody and everything, time was killed by working a little. At these times Paul Meyrin forgot, for hours together, that he was a husband and a father. He quickly grew enamored again of the easy life he had lived before he went to Russia.

However, after these trespasses, the painter was none the less exact in returning home; indeed, after a day when he had been most forgetful of his home he was commonly so affectionate and attentive to Lise, as though he felt the need of excusing himself to himself, that she had not the shadow of a suspicion.

If things had gone no further, Paul's escapades would have been nothing more than venial sins; but he soon launched out into greater depths. He happened to meet Sarah Lamber one afternoon at the studio of one of his painter friends, Robert Aubrey. She was posing, half nude, for a Phryne, which the tenant of the studio intended sending in to the next exhibition.

Paul Meyrin had not seen the young woman again until now since the day when, breaking off abruptly with her, he had sacrificed her for the sake of the Princess Olsdorf, on the arrival of the latter in Paris.

We know how Sarah Lamber took her revenge by sending to Prince Pierre the denunciation, supported by a score of newspaper clippings, which had come as a surprise on him at Pampeln, where he was, nothing doubting his wife. But this hateful action had turned to the confusion of Paul's former mistress, since it had ended, instead of in the bloody drama that, perhaps, in her anger she had hoped for, with the divorce of the princess and her marriage with her lover—that is, in the happiness of both of them; or, at least, so she must suppose.

After this piece of deceit Sarah, enraged at her own non-success, was careful not to boast of what she had done, or ever to speak of Paul Meyrin, except to congratulate herself on having nothing more in common with such a man—an artist without talent, mind, or future, and good for nothing better than to be the husband of a repudiated woman; and she had avoided going into public places, such as the theaters, where she would have been likely to see him.

Nevertheless, no matter what indifference she affected when mention was made in her presence of the household in the Rue d'Assas and its charming "At Homes," she never forgot her old lover, for she had really loved him; and when she heard in the studios she posed in that the painter was often visiting several of his artist friends, her dream was to meet him again. With what end in view? She did not define it. Perhaps it was simply to pick a quarrel with him, and to make him think, by some violent outburst, that she had always been laughing at him and his fancy for her; and perhaps it was to try, if the chance offered, to set a trap for him, in which he would let himself be taken as of old.

Sarah, therefore, was not really surprised to see Paul walk into Robert Aubrey's studio; but for all that she made a gesture of offended modesty, wrapping her shoulders in the light and transparent drapery which had covered her only to the hips, and exclaiming:

"So, so, people are to come in here as if it were a market-hall. Very well, then, I have done. I won't pose before strangers."

And jumping down from the model's table, she ran behind the screen where her things were, for, as is well known, a woman who poses, nude as she may stand while the painter is at his work, and, perhaps, before ten or a dozen artists at a time, will neither undress nor dress before any of them.

Paul Meyrin stood on the threshold of the room, struck with surprise first at this unexpected meeting and the young woman's exclamation, and then at her beauty, which had never seemed more dazzling to him.

After this momentary hesitation, natural enough in the circumstances, he approached the master of the house, who laughingly accepted his apologies, while two other brother artists, Gaston Briel and Raoul Martel, whom he offered his hand to in turn, jested aloud on the flight of the model ad salices.

Sarah, from her hiding-place, replied to them in a sharp and biting tone, which caused Paul strange emotion.

A few minutes later she appeared completely dressed, and said to M. Meyrin, going up to him:

"My good sir, when you are coming here just send Robert word, and I will go somewhere else."

"Bah!" said Paul, affecting not to take her words seriously, "is that the way with us, my dear Sarah? I really thought you had more sense. Have you still a grudge against me?"

"Oh, why should I have a grudge against you, pray?" said the model, twisting up her hair with a movement full of grace, which showed the fine proportions of a bust that Lise's husband had not forgotten. "Thank goodness the past has been dead and buried this long while. It is just because I don't want to be reminded too much of days of misery that I am not anxious to fall across you. So it seems you are growing tired of family life and brats. The deuce! A honey-moon does not last forever, especially when one has used up the first week of it in advance. Besides, you see, princesses are much the same as other women. As soon as you marry them they begin to be a weight upon your shoulders, until they transfer it to your forehead. Raoul, are you coming? As for you, Robert, you will let me know in advance when you are going to have troublesome visitors. If not, you can get a fine lady to pose until you finish your Phryne, supposing you can find one handsome enough to serve as a model."

Having caught hold of Martel's arm, whom this little scene amused as much as it did his friends, though he was just now the favored lover, Sarah dragged him off, having made a formal bow to the husband of the ex-Princess Olsdorf as she got to the door.

Paul returned the bow with a similar one, and exclaimed, turning to his brother artists:

"There is a reception for you. The deuce! Our friend Sarah nurses malice."

"Or love still," retorted Robert Aubrey, leaving his easel. "If you had dropped her for another girl of the same sort, she would have forgotten and forgiven you long ago; but you gave her up to get married—to a princess, too; and, better still, an adorable and beautiful woman."

"How satisfied she must be at this moment with the little scene just over," said Gaston Briel, in his turn. "Guessing she would meet you some day, she had her course ready marked out. She is a splendid girl, is Sarah, but a little mad-headed. Besides, it is highly probable that she may be in love with you still."

"I could swear it," said Robert. "Girls of her sort who no longer care for a man are always good souls with their former lovers; they are ready to offer their hand, and are the first to laugh at their old passion. I conclude from this, my dear fellow, that Sarah adores you still. One of these days we shall have the door of your studio shut in our faces by her."

"Of my studio," replied Paul, laughing. "That would be pretty difficult. You know it is one of my suite of rooms."

As he was less easy in this discussion than he wished to seem, the painter adroitly turned the conversation, and they began talking of other things.

In the evening Paul returned home, his mind, or rather his senses, full of the thought of Sarah. Three months afterward, events proved that Robert Aubrey had not been mistaken. After several stormy, angry, or ironical meetings, after a thousand sharp things had been said on either side, Paul and Sarah had opened their arms to each other, and their passion had riveted them together anew.

In enjoying again with his former mistress the voluptuous intoxications that had been lacking so long, the artist had also taken again to the freedom of bearing, the vulgar ease of manner, the gross flashes which, native to him, were things unknown in the Rue d'Assas. He found the change charming, new, and exciting. His old tastes had returned to him. He was tired of the elegance, the distinction, and the intellectual qualities of his wife. It was the old, old story of satiation with good things.

Paul Meyrin's renewed relations with Sarah were restricted for a time to meetings at his friends' houses and appointments at her place; but soon she begged the painter to take a studio in addition to and apart from his home. He yielded to her wish, delighted at being able to live again, though it were but intermittently, the life of the past.

He became the tenant of a studio on the Boulevard Clichy, which he furnished very elegantly, thanks to the good taste he had learned from Lise, and by dismantling somewhat his rooms in the Rue d'Assas, under pretense of offering a picture or a work of art to a charity sale, or a handsome weapon to some comrade. Then he invented the story of the work on a panorama, as suggested by his mistress, so that he might not have the trouble of imagining a new lie every day to account for his absence.

Matters being thus arranged, Paul Meyrin, who could not pass all his afternoons in the arms or at the knees of Sarah, began work on a picture the subject of which was Cleopatra awaiting Marc Antony.

At the end of two months, in spite of the interruptions that the model was the cause of the painter making, the picture was well advanced and promised to be one of the best by a man whose brush his passions plainly often guided. His love for Sarah did not hinder him from sometimes returning to his wife, by way of contrast. The wretched man, lost to all moral reserve, liked to think at such moments that he was a successful lover.

But Sarah, jealous and envious too, before long suspected these legitimate infidelities. Her hate of Mme. Meyrin grew, and, caring only to work mischief between man and wife, one morning she sent to the Rue d'Assas the unsigned letter which was certain to effect her purpose.

After this infamous and cowardly action she went gayly to the studio where, like the female Machiavelli she was, she seemed tenderer than ever. She desired that that night, when his wife would denounce his infidelity, Paul should be still under the charm of her, his mistress's ardent caresses.

Meanwhile she was posing as Cleopatra, whom the painter represented nude, reclining on a lion's skin, and braiding pearls in her raven hair. Sarah was in these circumstances a marvelously beautiful creature, made without a fault. Her rosy flesh had here and there the gleam of pale amber. Her splendid arms, raised above the head, gave her breast the firmness of marble; a lascivious smile parted her sensual lips; her great eyes, the eyelids slightly darkened, glittered with a look full of luxurious promise.

The painter, in admiration, often lowered his brush to gaze at the model; then would apply himself feverishly to the work.

Suddenly Sarah started up, exclaiming:

"Paul, your wife."

The door of the studio had opened; Mme. Meyrin stood on the threshold.

The artist, turning to her, grew livid.

Without casting a look on her husband, Lise walked to the sofa on which the model's things were tossed in a heap, pushed them with her foot toward the owner and said, with a scornful gesture:

"Dress and go."

"Madame," replied Sarah, in a rebellious tone, covering herself as well as she could with some of the gilded drapery of the couch of the Queen of Egypt, "this is not your house."

"Monsieur Meyrin's house is the house, too, of his legitimate wife, who drives forth from it his mistress. Go, I tell you, or I will kill you."

She drew from her bosom the revolver she had laid hands on in her husband's studio, and took aim at the young girl, who flung herself back, uttering a scream of fear. Mme. Meyrin's calmness was terrifying.

Recovering himself, Paul, in affright, rushed to her to put an end to the horrible scene. Lise would not let him speak a word.

"Monsieur," she said, pointing the pistol at him, "an article in the French Code excuses, it seems, the murder by the husband of an adulterous wife found in her sin; perhaps it would excuse equally, in a similar case, the murder of the husband by his wife. I forbid you to speak a word to me before this creature has gone."

The painter was not a coward; but he stopped suddenly. Lise's face bespoke implacable determination. She seemed the incarnation of that unconquered Slavonic race to which he thought she owed her descent.

"This creature," retorted Sarah, who had taken advantage of the moment of respite that Mme. Meyrin had allowed, and had caught up her clothes in her bare arms, "this creature! You took away her lover and made him yours. She took your husband. We are quits."

With a spring firing this Parthian shot, she disappeared through a masked door that led into a room adjoining the studio.

At this merciless outrage Mme. Meyrin sunk into a chair, hiding in her hands the flush of shame that had surged to her face. She, the Countess of Barineff, the ex-Princess Olsdorf, had come to the pass of bandying taunts with a painter's model! To this point had her love brought her for a man of a lower social condition than her own. She recalled, too, the miserable part she had had to play in the Rue Auber when she had had to be a witness against her innocent husband of his alleged adultery, and the tears of humiliation that had streamed from her eyes.

Suddenly she shuddered and sprung up as if at the touch of some unclean thing.

Her husband, kneeling at her feet, had said, as he tried to take her hands:

"Why did you come? Forgive me, Lise."

"Oh, leave me," she cried, repulsing him in horror. "I despise more than I hate you. This year and more you have been lying to me. God is punishing me cruelly for the love I felt for you. You were here hour after hour while, watching over our child, my thoughts were yours alone and wholly. The happiness I tried to give you was insufficient; you must have other tendernesses than mine. With me inspiration failed you; another woman's kisses could restore it."

As she spoke in a quick, broken voice, Lise was pacing up and down the studio. Her excitement grew with every word. Her open mantle allowed a glimpse of the slight costume under which her heart was beating as if it would break.

Thus she came before the picture which represented the daughter of the Ptolemies under the form and features of Sarah; and she exclaimed as much in grief as in wounded pride:

"I, too, once posed nude before you. My love urged me to that shamefullness. Well, then, Monsieur Paul Meyrin, do you need only girls of her sort as models? Am not I beautiful enough to serve your purpose? Come, take your brush; go on with your work."

Flinging away her furred mantle, tearing open with trembling hands her silken dressing-gown, loosening with a movement of the head her luxuriant hair which fell in a golden flood over her shoulders, Lise Barineff sprung toward the couch that Sarah Lamber had occupied a few minutes ago.

Then, when she had reached it, she added, superb and quivering, fixing with her steely look the husband who stood dumb, motionless and overcome:

"Well! I am waiting."

But the unhappy woman was at the end of her strength, for, suddenly, with a cry of agony she bent backward and fell senseless to the ground.

Paul rushed toward her, took her in his arms, and through a feeling of delicacy surprising enough in him, carried her to a sofa instead of laying her on the couch used by the model.

In a few minutes Mme. Meyrin regained her senses and, recalling what had just passed, she seemed to have quite regained her calmness. She knotted up her hair, wrapped herself in her mantle, and said to her husband, who was hanging eagerly about her and wished to oppose her going:

"I need no help from you. It was a momentary, bodily weakness. It is enough for me to have come here, without staying. I shall not forget the depths I have lowered myself to through you. In the Rue d'Assas you will never again find a wife, but the mother alone of your daughter. Farewell or not, as it pleases you."

And with a commanding gesture, forbidding him to accompany her, she went from the room.

CHAPTER V.
DIVORCE—SEPARATION.

Humiliated at the check, for perhaps he had in his vanity imagined that at a word from him his wife would forget everything, the painter went away enraged. A few hours later he was with Sarah, who said:

"You are a poor sort of thing. Do you suppose I was afraid? If I ran away it was for your sake alone, because I did not want to be the cause of a scene which would have fetched out all the neighbors. But, you know, we can't have any more of that sort of thing. You must be good enough to make your choice between your wife and me. If you don't there is an end of my posing for you. I don't want to have a bullet through my head one of these fine days. Don't expect me any more at the Boulevard Clichy."

As, in spite of all the efforts of her lover to make her change her mind, the young girl was firm, Paul Meyrin was forced to go back to his studio in the Rue d'Assas; but only to pass an occasional hour there. He could not settle down to work tempted as he was at one moment to go and implore his wife's pardon, at another to rush off to Sarah Lamber and tell her he was ready to live with her.

Too weak to make up his mind to a course, bad or good, unless he was helped to the decision by circumstances, the painter's life was idle and feverish. He went and came among his brother artists, who had speedily got to know of his adventure, thanks to the silly vanity of the model, eager to tell everywhere that a woman of fashion had wished to kill her. The story in less than twenty-four hours was the scandal of the day among the artists. Soon the little halfpenny boulevard papers spoke of it, and Dumesnil heard of it one evening in the greenroom at the Odéon.

That excellent man was not surprised by the news, for Paul's frequent absences had disquieted him, but he was greatly pained by the news, and next day went to Lise's. This time he was admitted.

Pale and with dark circles round her eyes, she was lying on a couch. Mme. Daubrel who, knowing nothing of the truth, supposed she was simply ill was with her and had just been telling her, with tears of joy and a trembling voice, that her own husband, touched by her repentance, was intending to pardon her; that almost by every post he sent from New York to Mme. Percier, her mother, news of her son, and that perhaps very soon she would see him again.

Mme. Meyrin, whose heart was so cruelly crushed, congratulated her friend, happy in her hopes, and thought sorrowfully that it would never be permitted to her to embrace her children; but when she saw Dumesnil with a troubled look on his face she dismissed her sad thoughts, and, to reassure him, said, smiling:

"Dear friend, nothing serious is amiss with me. In a day or two I shall be quite well again."

"You are the bravest of women," the comedian replied, bowing to Mme. Daubrel and taking the seat Lise had offered him; "they who do you an injury are vile wretches."

"An injury! Why, what do you mean?"

Marthe, no more than Lise seized his thought.

Dumesnil saw by her surprise that she knew nothing, and concluding that Mme. Meyrin wished her friend to be kept in ignorance, he went on quickly, not picking his words very carefully:

"I express myself badly. I meant that only vile wretches would not wish you all the happiness you deserve."

Lise was too intelligent not to guess, from the embarrassment of the old man, that he knew what had happened between her husband and herself. With a glance she thanked him for his discretion, and some minutes later, when Marthe was gone, she hastened to say:

"I don't know what you have heard, but anything you can have been told is less than the truth. Monsieur Meyrin has betrayed me so vilely that I will not forgive him. My love for him is dead. As long as he pleases we will live under the same roof, but as strangers to one another. A woman of my stamp can forget neither a humiliation nor an outrage. Don't speak to me of him, I beg you. There are only you and Marthe left to love me."

Too much moved to speak a word, Dumesnil pressed a respectful and tender kiss on the feverish hand that the poor betrayed woman stretched out to him.

"And soon, too," she went on, "I shall have only you and my daughter, for in a few months, perhaps in a few weeks, Madame Daubrel will leave France to go to her husband in America."

"Her husband! Why, I thought they were separated by a decree?"

"It is so; and moreover, the separation was pronounced against her; but for eight years she has so bravely expiated her fault that Monsieur Daubrel is disposed to forgive all. Marthe has told me a fact I did not know, that the separation lasts only as long as the man and wife wish. It is revocable at their choice, and is annulled by the simple fact of their voluntary reunion, without the intervention of a judge or the accomplishment of any formality."

"That seems but right," said Dumesnil.

"Yes," said Mme. Meyrin, bitterly, "a deceived husband has the right, if he pardons his wife, to open his house to her again, to give back his children to her. He needs not to authorize her to bear his name anew, since she has not ceased to bear it. By a single kiss all is wiped out. In the case of a divorce, on the contrary, the one woman in the world that the outraged husband can not take to his arms is she that has betrayed him. His union with her would be illegal, irregular; the children he might have by her would be bastards. Ah, my friend, how unhappy am I, and what a punishment mine is."

Lise had buried her face in her hands and was weeping.

The old artist dared not try to console her, and had no thought of defending Paul, who had made no real attempt at reconciliation with his wife, though a week had passed since the drama of the Boulevard de Clichy.

M. Meyrin, it is true, breakfasted and dined pretty regularly at home, but Lise and he did not exchange a dozen words while they were at table, and after the meal, if the painter took his wife's hand, it was lifeless and cold in his.

And yet if Paul had had a true, spontaneous, and heartfelt impulse, Lise, strong as she believed she was and wished to seem, would perhaps not have resisted, for she had had for her husband one of those passions that find excuses for the loved one from the very fact that they are not based on admiration, esteem, and an exaltation of the soul, that is to say, those lofty sentiments which when they disappear carry with them all affection and leave room for duty alone.

It is not thus with passions born of desire. The attraction which has roused them can, in contempt of all dignity, rearouse them suddenly, the nerves being exclusively concerned in their manifestation. The heart, in its mercifulness and goodness, can pardon while mindful of the betrayal; the flesh has no nobility of pride; in yielding anew it forgets.

But Paul Meyrin knew nothing of these things. The coldness of his wife humbled his foolish pride, and, thinking that he had done enough to win her back if she desired to return, he dared make no further effort through fear of a repulse. Very infatuated with Sarah, too, by reason of the resistance that she offered, he grew used, little by little, to return to the Rue d'Assas less regularly; and as he was ignorant of the delicacy and the attentions which win pardon for so many errors in a well-bred man, he soon ceased to mention if he was going out before breakfast or did not intend to return for dinner. This was so often the case that in less than a month after the miserable event that we have related, Mme. Meyrin was for many a long hour alone with her child, her door being closed to all but Mme. Daubrel, to whom in the end she had told all, and Dumesnil, whose affection for her grew with every day.

Lise heard no mention made of her husband's family. Mme. Meyrin, the mother, blamed severely her son's conduct, and dared not come to see her daughter-in-law. As for Mme. Frantz, whose envious feelings had been the origin of all the evil, she rejoiced in secret over the sufferings of this foreign fine lady who had carried off her brother-in-law from her profitable guardianship.

This isolation had a logical and fatal result, due to the temperament of the deserted wife. An excellent mother naturally, Lise began now to worship her children with a sort of nervous, unquiet, morbid passion, which was not appeased by the care she wrapped her daughter in, or the caresses she lavished on her.

It was as if she wished to avenge herself for having, for three years, divided her heart. More than ever, from this time forward, she thought of the absent ones. She spoke constantly of Alexander and Tekla, wept over their absence, and hungered to see them, were it but for an hour or a moment. These adored ones were the one subject of her talk with Marthe and Dumesnil. In his innocent weakness for poetical citations the honest comedian compared her with Andromache and Niobe.

Added to this, the poor woman received from her mother a letter which increased her humiliation. Having learned at Ems, from the French newspapers, the adventure of the Boulevard Clichy, Mme. Podoi hastened to write to her daughter in the sharpest terms. Her letter ended with these words:

"It is true you have the resource of a second divorce. Only, whom will you marry? God alone knows how low you may descend."

Proving beyond a doubt to Mme. Meyrin that the heart of her mother, pitiless in her wounded pride, was still shut against her, this harsh letter caused her deep sorrow; but she only replied to express all the regret she felt at not having had news of her children such as her mother was wont to send when, from time to time, she wrote.

Then, accepting with resignation the situation that events had made for her, she occupied herself solely with her beloved little daughter, driving away every thought that was not of those who alone remained dear to her. She saw her husband by chance alone, when it suited him to take his place at table. She spoke no word of reproach to him, and even took no interest in what became of him in his long absences. As she had said to Dumesnil, her love for Paul was dead. The spark from which the flame would have sprung again under the lightest breath of tenderness had died out forever in her.

Alas! the poor lonely one was soon to be stricken in this other love which alone now stirred her soul. Like wolves, misfortunes come in troops. One morning she received from St. Petersburg another letter from her mother which drew a cry of agony from her. Mme. Podoi mentioned baldly that, having had a telegram from Vera Soublaieff that the Prince Alexander was dangerously ill, she was starting for Pampeln with Dr. Psaroff.

Without the loss of a moment Lise dispatched to the daughter of the farmer of Elva a telegram imploring her to send at once, by the same means, news of her son, and this being done, she passed the whole day in unspeakable agony. Toward five o'clock she received Vera's answer, which drove her nearly mad.

"The doctor, who arrived last night with Madame Podoi, refuses to pronounce an opinion, but we hope that God will hear our prayers, and that our care will save your son. I will send a telegram every day."

Mme. Meyrin sunk into a chair, repeating amid her sobs:

"My son, my child!"

Suddenly she rose, ran to her writing-desk, and in a trembling hand wrote:

Having written these words, she rang the bell and told the servant who answered it to put the note in M. Meyrin's room. She had not seen him that day, and knew he was not to be home to dinner; she had heard him say overnight that he was going to the Amiens exhibition.

At this moment Mme. Daubrel entered.

"God has sent you, Marthe. Look, read."

She gave her Mme. Podoi's letter and Vera's telegram.

"My poor friend," said Mme. Daubrel. "What will you do?"

"I shall go to Pampeln."

"To Pampeln—you?"

"Yes, I. The prince is away, and I wish to save my son. I feel that I shall save him."

"But your husband?"

"I have no husband; I have only my children. While I am away you will watch over my daughter, will you not? I beg it of you."

"I promise—I swear it. She shall be my daughter."

Marthe had not the courage to combat her friend's resolution. In her motherly love, so much tried, she understood her too well.

"Then," said Mme. Meyrin, "help me. I shall not be long. There is not a moment to lose. The train for Berlin leaves at eight o'clock. I must catch it."

In less than half an hour, after thrusting into a valise what things were absolutely necessary and sending a telegram to her mother announcing her coming, Lise was ready.

"Adieu," she said to Mme. Daubrel, giving into her arms her little daughter, whom she covered with kisses and tears. "Adieu. Pray for my son."

A few minutes later, alone, without a servant, her veil lowered as if she were a fugitive, the ex-Princess Olsdorf got into a cab, and told the driver to take her to the Great Northern Railway Station.

CHAPTER VI.
LISE AND VERA.

"Has she not another child with a claim on all her care?" he said to himself. "By what right does she go away like this?"

The husband thought not of his sins, of the liberty his abandonment of her had left his wife, of the sacred rights of maternal love. He took counsel only with his pride, which had just received a rough blow. He could not hide from himself that he no longer counted for anything with the woman who had loved him so well.

In his heart he had not given up the hope that Lise would return to his arms one day, more passionate and more submissive than even, when he himself, tired of his mistresses, should make a real attempt to win his pardon. Seeing her resigned, as she had seemed to be since the scene of the Boulevard Clichy, he had come to the belief, in his stupid vanity as a "beauty-man," that some evening, if he said but a word, if he made but a sign, it would suffice to rouse again in the senses of his wife the mad love of former days. But now there was no room left for doubt; all was indeed over between them. He fell into a jealous rage and deep humiliation, which made him exclaim suddenly:

"Well, so be it. But if so, I too am free."

In this frame of mind, and acting mechanically rather than from solicitude, he went into Mme. Meyrin's room to see his daughter. As he entered the bedroom, Mme. Daubrel, faithful to her promise, was with the child.

"Ah! pardon me; I did not know you were here," said Paul, coldly, to the young woman. "Marie is fortunate to have you, as her mother has abandoned her."

"You can not think that Lise would abandon her little girl," said Marthe. "Frightened by the news she received of her son—"

"Her son!" the painter broke in. "What if Marie were to fall sick while her mother was away?"

"God will not suffer that. Besides, am not I here?"

"Then you approve of Madame Meyrin's going?"

"I should have acted as she has done."

"Ah! no doubt. To leave one's husband, to desert one's home, would appear natural enough to you, too."

At this insulting allusion to her past, Mme. Daubrel repressed an indignant exclamation and replied gently:

"It is bad of you, Monsieur Meyrin, to say that, as you well know. I can find no excuse for the woman who forgets her duty as a wife."

"Yes, you are right. I beg your pardon," said Paul, ashamed of having let his temper master him. "You see, things have come to a miserable pass. I don't blame Lise for loving her son; but she has not reflected on what the consequences may be of her going. In the first place, she ought to have had my permission to make the journey; and, then, what will people think of me when they know that my wife has gone back to her first husband?"

It was plain that vanity was the prime factor in M. Meyrin's nature.

"Her first husband is not in Russia," replied Marthe. "It is not known even in what country he is at this moment."

"He may return to Pampeln any day on account of his son's illness."

"It is not at all likely."

"It might happen, and then I should play a pretty part here, while Lise— No; I will never forgive her."

"Would you have had her leave her child to die?"

"Her child is here. Marie is her child; she has no other, since Prince Olsdorf has taken Tekla from her. Ah! how I hate that man! May God never bring me face to face with him! In deserting her home, Madame Meyrin has left me free. I shall use my liberty, I swear. She may come back when she likes. Perhaps, then, I shall be far away."

"And your daughter?"

"My daughter? You will be in the place of a mother to her until her mother, who ought never to have left her, returns."

"Oh, Monsieur Meyrin! Come, kiss her."

She had lifted up the little girl, who was smiling at her father.

Paul just touched the child with his lips, and went away hurriedly, as if afraid of yielding to Mme. Daubrel's prayers.

At about this time, exhausted by a two days' agonizing journey, Mme. Meyrin was taking her seat at Mittau in the carriage that her mother had sent to meet her at this station on the line from Berlin to St. Petersburg.

The driver, an old servant at the château, whom she recognized and hastened to question, had no better news of her son. The young Prince Alexander was still in danger.

The eight leagues from Mittau to Pampeln seemed endless to the poor woman. Her burning eyes fixed on the horses galloping along the road, she prayed God that she might not be too late. At last, within three hours' time, she saw the imposing mass of the château; and soon, covered with foam, dripping with sweat, quivering, the horses were pulled up before the main entrance.

Lise sprung out, and cried to her mother, who awaited her at the top of the flight of marble steps:

"My son—how is he?"

"He is still very ill," replied the general's wife, whom her daughter had not even thought of embracing. "Come. He is in his old room."

Mme. Meyrin heard no more. She ran across the great vestibule and up the staircase leading to the first floor of the right wing of the building, and thence, not noticing the servants, who looked at her in astonishment and bowed respectfully as she passed, she hurried to the room which she herself had had arranged in the olden time for the heir to the name of Olsdorf.

As she entered the room Dr. Psaroff, leaning over the child, was watching with anxious looks the convulsions he was struggling in.

"My son," murmured Lise, falling on her knees beside the bed, "my son!"

The doctor made a sign to her not to trouble him and to be calm. The crisis was serious; it was needful that he should study its every phase.

The sick child, with convulsed limbs and eyelids of a bluish black, tried to lift his hands to his head, where he felt intolerable pains. His low groans were mingled with incoherent words.

Vera, whom Mme. Meyrin did not see, was standing behind the physician. In the fatigued face of Soublaieff's daughter could be read the effects of sleepless nights and grief. For three days she had not had an hour's sleep, for Dr. Psaroff's arrival had added to her fears. The young prince was suffering from an attack of meningitis which might become tuberculous, and consequently contagious and mortal.

Vera had thereupon telegraphed to the prince at Singapore, where she thought he was likely to be. Then, as it was impossible that Pierre Olsdorf should arrive in time to embrace his son if he was to succumb, she had not hesitated to send to Mme. Meyrin the telegram which had brought her thither. She did not think she had the right to deprive a child of the last caresses of its mother.

Within the last twenty-four hours, however, the skillful physician was somewhat more hopeful. The abundant bleedings he had practiced, notwithstanding the tender years of the patient, seemed to have given some relief. Still, the doctor refused to pronounce a final opinion. All fear of new complications was not over.

When, the crisis having passed, Dr. Psaroff raised his head, the child was calm, his eyes were closed, his thin little face no longer bespoke suffering, but a deep exhaustion. Lise touched with trembling lips the darkened eyelids of her son, and stretched out her hands to the doctor, who drew her aside and said:

"You were right to come, madame. From the first day of his illness Alexander has been tended by an angel of goodness whom fear of contagion has not checked for a moment; but sometimes a mother's kisses can do more than all our science. If we can struggle on for five or six days more, without any new accident, I will answer for the result."

"May God hear you," said the unhappy woman.

Then, through her tears, recognizing Soublaieff's daughter, who had drawn near and was bending to kiss her hand, as formerly, she took her to her heart, saying:

"You? Ah, may Heaven reward you!"

"Madame la Comtesse," replied Vera, giving, from an exquisite delicacy of feeling, her maiden rank to the ex-Princess Olsdorf, "I have only done my duty."

"Yes; may Heaven reward you!" Mme. Meyrin repeated. "I know well what your life has been since you left Elva. Calumny itself has not dared to breathe a word against you. Let us forget the past and speak of it no more. Let us think of nothing but the union of our efforts to save my son."

Alexander's mother noticed now that Vera was dressed as humbly as when she lived with her father, and still wore the national head-dress. Since her return to Pampeln the adorable girl had kept the oath that she swore to herself in that hour of despair when she believed that she was forsaken. She would not have had it that anything in her dress should recall the blissful days she had spent in Paris; she desired that on returning home Pierre Olsdorf should meet her again as he had found her when he took her from the farm at Elva.

Lise Barineff guessed this and her heart thrilled; but banishing every thought that had not to do with her fears as a mother, she smiled on Vera, pressing her hands affectionately.

From this day forward there was a sublime struggle between these two women. They watched in turn by the sick-bed. The disease was at its worst, and the child could not be left for a moment, for when certain symptoms were manifest the most energetic remedies had to be used.

From fear of contagion, in case the meningitis Alexander was suffering from should become tuberculous, Mme. Meyrin was obliged to refrain from seeing Tekla. She had kissed her hastily, and had hung for a moment only over the beauty of the little girl, who was growing to be ravishingly pretty. As a measure of prudence they had placed her with her maid and Mme. Bernard, the governess of the little prince, in the left wing of the château, while Mme. Meyrin was to share Vera's rooms.

As for Mme. Podoi, Dr. Psaroff required that she should not have a room near her grandson, as a sick-chamber should be visited by as few people as possible. In consequence of this arrangement, Lise hardly saw her mother once a day, and then but for a few minutes. There could, therefore, be no question between them of anything but the state of Alexander's health, and she was thus protected from the unkind remarks that the general's wife would have been sure to make in reference to the past if their interviews had been more frequent and longer.

For six days and nights Mme. Meyrin took no rest. When she was by her son her eyes never left him, tortured as she was by his moans, watching his slightest movement, trying to make out the disconnected words that he uttered in the height of delirium, beseeching him with sweet words and a low voice to know her, and caressing with her lips his little thin, burning hands. When she had to yield her place to Vera, and go and lie down in an adjoining room, she could not get a moment's sleep. If her son should die while she was away from his side! And if, on the other hand, his first look, his first conscious moment, should be another's, and not hers!

Then she would creep to the half-closed door and listen, panting, anxious, jealous, and ready to spring forward.

This martyrdom had lasted for a week with alternations of hope and despair, when one morning, after a night better than any he had had since he took to his bed, the little patient opened his eyes, and, through the goodness of God's love and pardon, his look was turned to his mother and showed the surprise he felt. Then he closed his eyes again slowly, as if to sink once more into a sweet dream. In a few moments, opening them again, he hesitated for an instant, like a child who has scarcely learned to speak, and a smile struggling to his lips, still discolored by his sickness, he murmured: "Mamma."

Lise stifled a cry of happiness, and fell upon her knees.

"Be calm, madame," said the doctor, appealingly, he and Vera being present at this return to life.

But Mme. Meyrin heard nothing but this word, "mamma," which told her that her son knew her again, and was restored to her. What blessed sunshine for a mother is such a look from her child! How her heart, turned to ice by fear, is warmed again by it! What a chain of iron are his little weak arms when they are twined about her neck! What a delight is his laugh!

Bending over her son, Lise prayed and smiled together. The doctor had not the heart to order her away; but when, after a short examination, he declared that the patient was saved, she grew deathly pale, and pressed her hand to her heart. She felt as if she were being suffocated. Happily, almost immediately afterward she burst out sobbing:

"Let her weep," said Psaroff to Vera; "tears are the best soothers."

Mme. Meyrin, in fact, soon grew stronger. Pressing in hers the hands of Soublaieff's daughter, who tended her affectionately, she again went to the bedside.

The doctor was not mistaken. In a few days' time the young prince's convalescence began. It was to be rapid, as the time was the beginning of the summer; but one might have thought that it was his mother's life that revivified the child, for each day Lise grew paler and weaker. When, her son and daughter on either side of her, she walked down to the park, she looked like a sick woman whose uncertain steps two guardian angels were supporting. If they said to her, in their simplicity, "Mother, you won't leave us again, will you?" she covered them with kisses instead of replying. The unhappy woman was in despair at the thought of being forced to part again from them, now that they were doubly dear to her.

One day, as they extended their walk rather further than usual, her son drew her toward the great avenue of larches and fir-trees, where she had sunk, a few years ago, into the arms of Paul Meyrin. As they were about to pass into its accursed shadows, the ex-Princess Olsdorf, suddenly remembering, cried:

"Oh, not there—with you—never!"

She gently drew back Alexander, who did not understand his mother's emotion.

This day she told herself that she must be going.

Now that her child's health was no longer a subject of inquietude, all her surroundings reminded her cruelly of the past. In this château, the doors of which pity alone had opened to her again, she had reigned as its sovereign; in these halls, now deserted, she had received the representatives of the highest Russian nobility; she had been paid court to and welcomed throughout this domain whither she had not dared to return save in fear and trembling. How far away were all these things now. She was no longer the Princess Olsdorf, and yet no one ventured to call her Mme. Meyrin. By Vera Soublaieff's directions, she was addressed in her maiden name—the Countess Lise Barineff—so that in the eyes of the servants, whose duty it was to wait on her, she might not appear to have descended from her social rank. Even the respect she was the object of on the part of every one became a painful humiliation to her.

Besides, in Paris she had duties to fulfill toward that other child, who was no less than Alexander and Tekla flesh of her flesh, and one of the objects of the only love henceforward permitted her. It was true that nearly every day Mme. Daubrel had sent good news of her daughter, but she had scarcely mentioned her husband. Lise did not know how he had taken her departure, and Marthe, in her latest letter, had said: "As you son's life is saved, do not delay your return." Resigned as she was, complete, too, as was her abandonment beyond recall all hope of happiness in her married life, she was alarmed by this pressing summons. She foreboded some new misfortune.

That very evening Mme. Meyrin told her mother of her resolution to leave Pampeln next day, and the general's wife, whose heart could not but be touched by her daughter's conduct, found a few kind words to say to her. Lise had shrunk from letting her know how matters were between herself and her husband. With heroic courage she affected to be quite at ease about the future. Paul, it was true, had committed a fault, as so many other men had done before him, but he had come back to her, and all was forgotten. The ex-Countess Barineff believed in this untruth, dictated by her daughter's pride, and promised to keep up with her an affectionate and frequent correspondence.

After this interview with her mother, Lise went to Soublaieff's daughter in her rooms.

She was there alone.

"Dear Vera," she said, "I shall leave Pampeln to-morrow at day-break, before my son and daughter are awake. If I were to hear their voices, if their eyes were to be turned on mine again, I should not have the strength to go. You understand my feelings, do you not?"

The young girl replied by a movement of the head simply. She dreaded this last, inevitable interview, and dared not trust herself to speak.

Lise went on:

"But I can not go without saying how grateful I am, not only for your devoted care of my children, but for your welcome of myself. The law forbade my crossing the threshold of Pampeln, and you opened its doors to me. May God bless you! When Alexander and Tekla ask what has become of me, find some tale to tell them which will explain and excuse my absence. Tell them I love them with all my soul, and that I will soon come back. Let them love and respect me always."

Vera made an earnest gesture of assent.

"Oh, I know that it has always been so," Mme. Meyrin continued. "You are a noble and saintly girl. God could not give them a more worthy guardian. I will beg of Him, in my most earnest prayers, never to part them from you. Swear that you will fill my place always, not because I am going away, but because I shall not live long."

"Madame la Comtesse!" cried Vera, her eyes full of tears, and covering with kisses the young woman's hands, which pressed hers convulsively.

"Oh, I feel it. I am mortally wounded. Can a mother divide her heart into two parts? It is my punishment. You will see the prince again. Tell him all that I have suffered. I hope he will pardon me when I am dead. Adieu, I shall go hence, full of love and respect for you."

The ex-Princess Olsdorf had drawn to her the sobbing young girl. She kissed her with a long and feverish kiss, saying:

"For them Vera—for them, and for you."

Then she fled, stifling her sobs.

Next morning, after having brushed with a kiss the eyelids of her sleeping children, who it may be were dreaming of her, Mme. Paul Meyrin, bent with sorrow, took her place in the carriage that was to bring her to Mittau.

On her arrival in Paris she was scarcely recognizable. In forty-eight hours she looked ten years older. When Mme. Daubrel saw her come into the room in the Rue d'Assas, where she was sewing near the sleeping Marie, she could not hinder a movement of surprise.

"Yes," said Lise, sinking into her friend's arms, "it is so, is it not? I am much changed?"

"No, no, but the journey has tired you," said Marthe. "What else could be expected?"

"Yes, it has," she said, with a sad smile. "And Marie?"

"You can see. The dear little thing is as well as possible. I have been with her every day, and all day long."

"I knew I could depend on you."

Mme. Meyrin kissed her daughter softly, fearing to disturb her; and sinking into a chair opposite Marthe, asked:

"And—my husband?"

"He has been away some days."

"Where is he?"

"At Rome. He was sent for about some important work."

"At Rome? Work? Marthe, do not lie to me. Can any new misfortune surprise me? Do not fear. I am brave. Monsieur Meyrin has gone away with that woman."

"I don't know, but I do not believe it."

"And I am sure of it. Has he left nothing for me—not a word?"

"He sent me this letter before he went."

Mme. Daubrel took from under the clock on the mantel-shelf a sealed letter and gave it to Mme. Meyrin, who tore open the envelope, devoured the contents of the inclosed letter, without a muscle of her face betraying the emotion it occasioned, and, handing it to the young woman:

"Read," she said.

"Oh, it is infamous," cried Marthe, after her eyes had taken in the purport of the following lines: