Diana

CHAPTER SIX

"Fancy a child of eleven reading such learned books!"

"I'm twelve," corrected Clemens, swinging his legs. "Don't you know that even now?"

"A thousand pardons," said Linnartz, bowing in mock reverence.

"And you? You must be at least a thousand," teased the child.

Gregor, who as usual after lunch had taken up the day's paper, drew the lad towards him.

"What makes you think the baron is a thousand years old?"

"Because he always treats me as if I were a kid. He's older than you, isn't he?"

"The other way about."

"How old are you, Papa?"

"Very old," answered Gregor evasively.

The boy continued to lean against his father's knee for a while, pensive and silent. Then, turning to Andreas, he asked:

"And you, Herr Seeland, how old are you?"

"Clemens, be quiet," said Olivia who had taken a seat in the background. "I told you only the other day that Herr Seeland is twenty-six years old."

Gregor, who had fallen into a brown study, roused himself at these words.

"Twenty-six," he repeated, and covered Andreas with his eyes.

"Yes, already, Excellency."

"Already? Then what is left for me to say, my dear Doctor?"

"I do not know. But when you were six-and-twenty did you not likewise say 'already'?"

"Never!"

"Were you so mature? Did your plans so satisfy you that you felt no uneasiness?"

"I was nothing but a junior barrister at the time. Yet such an idea would never have crossed my mind. Uneasiness as to my plans? As to a pretty wench, yes, but as to my plans? I hadn't any!"

"Strange," murmured Andreas.

"You are disappointed? Really, you take life too seriously."

"Can one take it too seriously?" interposed Olivia from her corner.

"I should like to say," Linnartz's strident voice was heard vociferating, "that he who always endeavours to..."

Gregor's eyes had passed over the baron to Olivia:

"It is well that we mortals should try to live our lives without exclamation marks. At least women, who are incapable of renouncing their dreams..."

"No," said Olivia coldly.

"... and can only find comfort in the poets," concluded Gregor, smiling at Andreas with a challenge in his eyes. "They have to live on dreams, unless they choose to scramble after the illusion of effective action. Had I adopted a poet's—beg pardon, a composer's—career, I should not have spent my time dreaming."

"What would you have done, Sir, if I may ask?" said Gregor's victim.

"Worked! Worked with feverish energy. Every day and all day. Yes. Perhaps then at six-and-twenty I might have felt uneasy lest I could not accomplish what I had set myself to do. Still, every man to his own temperament!"

He took leave of Olivia and the poet, and disappeared with Linnartz into his study.

Olivia sent the child away to its schoolroom. Then, turning to Andreas, she said:

"He has become your foe."

"And yours."

"He's been that these many years," she answered bitterly.

Ever since the baroness had learned what she wanted to know from Clemens, her husband, acting on her advice, had kept a note of the days when Andreas came to the house. His surveillance was an easy matter, for he had merely to ring and ask the servant how his mistress was, an act of ordinary courtesy. Then he would say:

"Is the countess at home?"

"The countess is upstairs reading with Herr Seeland."

He had noticed that the visits had mostly taken place during the count's absence from home, while Gregor was taking his afternoon ride, or away at Diana's. Today, the count had asked Linnartz to his study to run through some papers that had been accumulating, and the baron was determined not to let him escape this time. This "could not be postponed," that "could not be postponed"; he was untiring in finding important documents that needed discussion, needed Gregor's signature. An hour went by; half an hour more. Still the baron brought forward other important matters. At last Gregor lost patience.

"Just one thing more, Excellency, I must beg you to give me your decision. A moment," and he disappeared, apparently to fetch a document from his own office downstairs. But he had merely gone to make his usual inquiry, and, having received the hoped-for answer, he came jubilantly back again.

"It's the question of finding accommodation for the older archives. We're up to the ceiling with the stuff downstairs, and you once suggested, Excellency, that we might find room for them in your own apartments...."

"Certainly, certainly," said Gregor rising. "That will be all right. You can get to work on it as soon as you like."

"I could not do it entirely on my own responsibility. The dividing-up of the room which has hitherto been used for domestic purposes. I beg Your Excellency to show me just how you would like it arranged."

"Must it be done today?"

"As you like, Sir," said Linnartz, playing the faithful subordinate.

His chief thought: "What does the fellow mean by shrugging his shoulders like that?"

Aloud, he said:

"All right, come along. Which room had you in mind, the one where we used to put up guests, and perhaps the one with the balcony?"

"If the countess has no objection, it seems to me that they would be the most convenient."

Linnartz's heart was all of a flutter, for the count invariably went upstairs two at a time, and this pace was rather beyond the baron's capacities. Above all, however, he was excited at the expectation that his plans were about to be crowned with success—a success he had so long been hoping and longing for. He was thinking: "It's a sure thing, they can't escape now. Please God they will not simply be reading together on the balcony!" As he drew near the door he was on tenter-hooks. The count, who was blissfully unaware of his companion's agitation, thought: "How pleasantly these rooms are situated, so cut off from the rest of the house! If only Diana had come here as Olivia's guest...."

Linnartz opened the door and drew aside to allow his chief to pass in first. Thank God, the room was empty; they must be next door; and while he followed Gregor into the first room he glanced over at the door leading to the next. There, he knew, his victims must be. He wondered if they had locked themselves in. An unwise thing to do! His lascivious imagination conjured up what might be going on there, the disordered attire, rumpled hair. Would they hear steps approaching, voices speaking? Gregor was saying:

"The folios can be stacked up here ... tables as may be necessary... That will be all right...."

"And in the next room, Excellency?"

"Of course, the same arrangement as here."

Gregor went towards the door. Linnartz, with a remnant of decency, remained behind. Gregor opened the door. Linnartz trembled. Not a sound.

"Why, it's quite dark here," said Gregor. "The blinds are down. Where's the switch?" His hand travelled on the wall. He turned on the light.

One second of abysmal silence went by. Two seconds. Three. Linnartz peered in from behind. He saw Olivia on a divan, propping herself up on her hand, while Andreas stood opposite her, hard pressed against the wall. Both, blinded by the sudden light, had raised a hand to shield their eyes, stretching it out towards the electric globe thus all unconsciously assuming an attitude of shame. As if suddenly turned to stone, the count stood in the doorway, a black shadow against the staring lamp.

Andreas was the first to recover his wits; he had foreseen the disaster as soon as the voices came through the door and was therefore better prepared than the others. He now took two steps towards the count, and in a hoarse voice he began:

"Count..."

The spell was broken. All three moved. Olivia got up and stood behind Andreas, looking at her husband with haughty and hostile eyes whose expression was colder than he had ever seen before. At the same time Gregor marched upon Andreas with uplifted fist. Whilst almost simultaneously Linnartz sprang towards him from the rear, holding him back, and whispering in a warning voice: "Excellency!"

Another pause, not so long as the first, ensued. Then the count turned half round and said in a low voice, tense with wrath:

"Go!"

Andreas made an apology for a bow to the countess, and, passing Linnartz, moved towards the door. But the count, who by now had guessed the part Linnartz had played, was filled with so great a loathing for the intriguer, that even now he wished to shield Olivia against him. He, therefore, slowly left the room, closing the door after him as he went.

That same evening the major and the captain called upon Andreas at his hotel, and presented him with the count's challenge. As they turned to go away, Othello pushed open the bedroom door and sprang towards the strangers. His master seized him by the collar, and it was as much as Andreas could do to hold the door back while the two men made their exit.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"Gregor! Please, no more," pleaded Diana softly as she shook her curls. "My lips are worn out, and I shall never be able to kiss again!"

"A thousand times more—and me, only me—until we die."

He threw himself upon her and looked deep into her eyes.

"Brown, deep brown. Any red in them? The red of a deer? No, a falcon. Did your father know beforehand what you would grow up to be that he chose the name Diana?"

"If you will let me go, I will tell you all about it."

With the swift movement of a stripling, he sprang up from the wide bed, slipped into his dressing gown which he wrapped round him, tying the cord with the same care with which, as lieutenant, he had buttoned up his uniform tunic, pushed his fingers through his hair, and flung himself into the big arm-chair by the fire. Holding his hands out towards the blaze, he spoke softly to her over his shoulder, a playful note in his voice.

"Diana."

"Gregor."

"No, say it the way you did that first time when you were riding."

"Gregor."

He laughed.

"Go on, tell me all about it."

"Well, it happened over there in Macedonia," she began, bringing a footstool towards the hearth, and sitting down on it at his feet. "My father, you must know, is very wise; he can interpret dreams, understands about magnetic currents, has studied Swedenborg and Leonardo...."

"The portrait in that portfolio is...?"

"Yes, it is he. He told me he had believed my mother would die in giving birth to me, for he thought I was going to be a boy, and he knew that if she gave birth to a boy she would die. So firm was his conviction, that he was going to call me Tristan, because Tristan's mother, too, had died at his birth. When I turned out to be a girl, he said to himself: She will have many masculine elements in her make-up, so I'll call her Diana. Five years later my brother came into the world, and that same night my mother passed away."

She ceased. Gregor's hand lay lightly on her head. She seemed suddenly to have become agitated, her thoughts elsewhere as she prodded the wood in the fireplace. The logs fell apart, and he had to gather them together, very cautiously, so as not to disturb her as she rested her head on his knee.

"Are you cold?" she asked after a while. "Where had I got to?"

It was not her habit to be so absent-minded. Yet this night she had constantly been distrait. Could she have something on her mind? Was she frightened? He tried to shake off his thoughts. But he had come near the truth. Diana was filled with an anxiety which she would have hidden from him had she been able. Before his arrival, when she had received a tiny note from the major telling her what had taken place, she had thought: "The feeling of security is what makes the victor! If he is confident, I shall certainly do nothing to shake his courage." Yet when she saw him so self-reliant, in the mood of a man who has at last become master of some unpleasant perturbation, her own doubts had been laid to rest. Again she tried to rouse herself from her meditations. She turned her eyes towards him and said tenderly:

"Are you cold, Gregor?"

"Why should I be?—Well, your mother died. You told me something about her before. She was beautiful."

"Yes, but do you know what she was? Shall I tell Your Excellency a secret?"

She smiled as she addressed him thus formally, and looked up at him with the inscrutable air of the professional story-teller.

"I hear and obey," he said, smiling back at her.

They sat silent. An atmosphere of security seemed to envelop them, such as they had never experienced before, and had never thought it possible to achieve. Peace and contentment coupled with a slight feeling of lassitude pervaded their bodies and their minds, as they settled down in the comfortable warmth of the log fire. Had they not lain for long in the ardour of love's embraces?

"My great-grandmother, or, rather, her mother, held the crown of Poland concealed within her house. It was in the days following one of the partitions. The fugitive king—or maybe he was only the pretender—in any case he was the son of the old king—came to her estate in order, secretly, to kiss the royal crown. The lady was very beautiful, and she was a widow. Romantic as were the kings of those days, after kissing the crown he kissed its lovely guardian, and thus it was that she gave birth to my grandfather. My family has always tried to pooh-pooh the old legend, but I have positive proof of its veracity. We still have the medallion he gave her on the morning when he bade farewell. The features on the medallion are identical with those of the picture which hangs in the museum at Rapperswyl, where all the Polish monarchs hang in rows. Does the story please you?"

"And so you've got mighty ancestors too. I am overwhelmed with it all. What more can you have? Yours is youth, and beauty, and intelligence—and now you have added to all this, ancestors that wore the kingly crown." He looked down at her with paternal ecstasy.

"You are as gallant in your talk as the lovers were in the old romances," she laughed up at him.

"The style has stuck to me from my youth," he answered ironically. "My mother was not nearly such a grand lady as yours, but she, too, was a beautiful woman."

"Did she die young?" No sooner had she asked the question than she thought: "It is strange how my mind dwells on the idea of death, tonight."

"Haven't I told you? This was the manner of her dying:—I was about seven-and-twenty at the time. She had been ailing for a long time, and her home life was not happy. Well, one day I got a wire: 'Come at once, Mother very ill.' It so happened that on the day previous I had received my first order, the Danebrog cross—of course I had not deserved it, I just chanced to be at dinner with the Danish prime minister with whom we were negotiating at the time. There are few really pretty decorations in our country, so that a nicely enamelled cross, rather cheap to be sure, but with a quite charming blue-and-white ribbon, would naturally attract a good deal of comment. At home I found my mother in bed, very feeble. I had always been rather a handful, never made a success of anything—except music, and escapades, and, again, music. Father's best hope for me was a job in the orchestra at some spa or other. But Mother always stood up for me. She used to say: 'Do let the youngster be, he'll make good in the end, never fear.' So when I bent over her as she lay dying, I showed her the cross on my breast, my first decoration. She fingered it gently and said nothing. Then, suddenly, she pressed it to her lips, kissing it as if it were a crucifix. Tears rolled down her temples, wetting the pillow. She said: 'Thank you, Gregor, I have always had faith in you. Now you can prove to your father and the rest of the world that I was right.' She put her arm round my neck—and soon she had passed away, holding my cross in her hand."

Diana had risen to her feet as he spoke, and now he bowed his grey head, resting it on her hands. She, too, was profoundly stirred. A look of ageless compassion came over her face as she gazed down on this man whom nature had endowed with physical beauty, and an intellect bordering on genius. He who had made himself the master of the art of dissembling as well as of self-control, was nevertheless, although thirty years had now elapsed since the tragical event he was recalling, broken at its recollection. Was he really sobbing? She felt that at this moment the restraint he had exercised over himself during the last twenty-four hours was suddenly broken down, and that this overwhelming grief was a tardy and unexpected reaction from the shock of yesterday's discovery.

"Gregor," she whispered tenderly laying her head against his so that the brown and the grey locks mingled. "Gregor, I am here."

"Stay—by—me—Diana."

The words were a new revelation to her of the man's loneliness. Suddenly he sprang up, pushed his hair back, hastily wiped his eyes, and said with forced joviality:

"I'm sorry, what a fool I've been! Last time, ten, twelve years ago I said to myself that three duels were a good number, and it would be well to stop at that. Apparently there's to be a fourth. That's a handsome number, too. And even if there had to be ten," his voice rang out into the room, "I should fight them all to protect Olivia from slander."

The first time during all these months he had ever uttered Olivia's name in Diana's presence! Too late he realized what he had done. He rushed over to where she stood, seized her hands and covered them with kisses:

"Forgive me—my darling—beloved—Diana—forgive me."

"What have I to forgive?" she asked earnestly. "Is it not a fine thing that you wish to shield her for her own sake, and not merely because it happens to be the custom?"

"And Linnartz, what do you make of him?"

"He's been trying to do it for some time."

"To do what?"

"Bring about your fall, Gregor."

"There are other ways...."

"Did he not try them—in vain?"

"Was the baroness working with him do you think?"

"Undoubtedly."

"The brutes! But when all is over—— Next week I've got to go to court for the birthday celebrations; I shall be in Berlin and shall demand his removal—even if I have to make a cabinet question of it."

"That's precisely what I advised you to do three weeks ago."

"Yes, and if I had at that time brought a little more pressure to bear on the Austrian minister, he'd have sent that devil of a poet..." He pulled himself up. "Forgive me," he pleaded, drawing her to him on the sofa. "I'm sorry—he was your friend—well, there's nothing to be done now—he'll have to do penance for his sins—rather young, but he has always lived fast—— What do you think?"

He fancied her preoccupied with a woman's memories of Andreas while he was speaking. But her thoughts were quite differently engaged. She was coolly calculating the hazards of the impending duel, remembering Andreas's inaptitude with firearms. Had he not given her a demonstration of it that day in the shooting-range? Again she considered the risks an opponent must run when faced by an unskilled marksman....

"Twenty paces, did you say?"

She closed her left eye, raised her right arm, and aimed an imaginary weapon at the door.

"An exchange of three shots? Who's the umpire?"

"The prince."

"At six?"

"Six-thirty."

Diana got up, went towards the fireplace, pushed the logs together, and leaned on the marble mantelpiece, staring at the little clock.

"It is two," she said in a strangely cold voice.

The practical, everyday tone, which she had assumed as armour against the emotional strain under which she was labouring, was misconstrued by her lover to mean that she was deep in memories of Andreas. Jealousy, which Gregor had hitherto kept in leash for her sake, now flamed up with redoubled force against this young rival whom he hoped soon to put out of action. His voice was gloomy as he exclaimed:

"Diana."

"Gregor."

The two names, which so shortly before they had tossed towards one another like gaily coloured balls, now fell darkly through the night.

"Did you—love this poet?" he asked at length.

"At one time I loved him," she answered calmly, after a slight pause.

He thought:

"Will she speak as calmly of me, saying 'at one time,' when another than I asks her the same question? A chain in which I am no more than a link? In days gone by, the rôles were the other way about...."

His agitation increased.

"And he you?"

"He loves the countess."

"Not you, Diana, no longer you?"

His question was uttered in a tone of such urgent need, such poignant longing, that she turned towards him in a sudden impulse. Her heart was full of pity at the sight of this man whom jealous doubts had thus mastered after all that had happened between them and after he had surprised Andreas with Olivia; yet she realized that it was solely on her account that he was thus overwhelmed with anxiety and mistrust; had he not asked only about Andreas's feelings towards her, not the other way about?

He, for his part, as he now saw her standing before him, the contour of her body gleaming through her thin silken nightgown as she stood with her back to the fire, seemed transported to another sphere, and everything around him seemed like the memory of a dream. The fine room, built in the Arab style, the heavy curtains, the figure of the young woman by the hearth—all this on the night before a duel.... Had he not lived through it once already, long ago? As if under compulsion, unconscious of his movements, he got up, and went towards the apparition, which advanced a step to meet him. The vision stretched out hands, his hands reached out likewise. What was the matter? What was the burden of grief weighing upon this moment of time? Was she perhaps a spirit come to take him far away? She was close to him, and he saw that she had mighty pinions, and in her right hand a torch hanging down towards the ground....

Her hand pressed his in silence, and suddenly he knew that her life at that present moment was bound up in his. His gaze, which had been fixed and hard, softened, and she saw his eyes looking kindly down into her own.

"Where have you been, my dear?"

He sighed deeply, as if freed from a torpor.

"I seemed—to be—in a dense—fog. Is that you, Diana? Is it you?"

He sank into a chair, drew her down on to his knee, pressed his lips against her, wrapping her about in his arms as if he were hugging the very essence of life and youth to his heart.

"Stay with me!"

Very softly the words were spoken, and it seemed to her as if he were afraid of giving voice to a presentiment that he was about to be torn apart from her; it seemed as if he were melting away in her very arms, vanishing like a shadow, a thought.

But she shook off the terror, smiled up at him, and said:

"You stay with me!"

Never before had Gregor felt this steeled body nestling against him with such passionate self-surrender.

CHAPTER EIGHT

For an hour Olivia had lain motionless upon the divan in the guest's room. Then she was seized with anxiety, not so much as to the issue of the duel, but rather as to the possibility of seeing Andreas again. He could not come to her; she could not go to his hotel. Next morning she sought out the prince in his office. She was hatless, for thus she had left her apartment to come down to see him. Her whole aspect and the unusualness of such a visit (she had never entered the offices at the embassy before) were a surprise.

"Prince, listen to me. I want—I must—this evening—I must see Herr Seeland once more. You will lend me your rooms?"

It sounded more like a command than a request. He understood, drew his keys from his pocket, and handed her the one she needed.

"Thanks. Thank you very much."

Late that same evening, on foot, muffled in a veil, she entered the little flat. It was empty. Soon after, there was a gentle tap on the door. She opened. Andreas stood outside.

There had been no extensive preparations for the visitors. On the buffet, fresh water and wine, cigarettes, and a few biscuits, were just as the prince had left them. He had sent his servants away till the morrow, had, himself, gone through the rooms to see that all was as it should be. In the dining-room where, on New Year's Eve, they had drunk the count's health, he paused for a moment and smiled ironically. Here, two weeks later, the count's wife was to spend what would perhaps be the last hours she would ever spend with her husband's rival. He put on his hat, took his walking-stick, then went back to his bedroom to readjust his tie in front of the mirror. His eye fell upon the perfectly made bed with its faultless coverlet, and he whistled softly as he puffed at his cigarette.

"Honi soit..."

At first Olivia seemed agitated, and her lover thought:

"She's not at her best tonight."

She would stare mutely into nothingness, and then suddenly make a wild gesture as if to pull him to her, following this with another gesture which thrust him away. She got up and paced to and fro in the little room, backwards and forwards between the window, the chairs, and the divan. She spoke of Clemens, of divorce, of Linnartz, once even referred to her mother in Dalmatia, about whom she usually thought with contempt. But Andreas soon realized that all this was merely an effort to bridge the gulf that had yawned between them when these two persons of simple nature had suddenly been brought face to face with the fact that they were guilty of adultery.

Andreas had always looked indulgently and even reverently upon her blind gratification of her instincts; he had interpreted the inability on her part to speak, a dumbness which was wont to follow upon moments of ardent ecstasy, as a symbol of the ineffable which he, the plastic artist, was excluded from experiencing. His alert and active mind had found a haven in the churlish silences of this woman, and it was that more than anything else which had swept him along into the stormy waters in which he now found himself. He had never conceived of his passion or of hers as appertaining to the courses of everyday life, and he was at a loss to understand why this everyday life should now intrude upon a province outside its sphere. Yesterday's happenings left him cold, they did not seem to him to be part of the world he and she had created in common—a community based on the sensuous and yet quite above and beyond the circle of the senses, intangible, in no way belonging to the realm of reason.

Now, when he and Olivia were alone and together once more, he too was aware of the same inhibition within himself which had caused her so much disquietude; and he who had vowed himself to Olivia with that first look into her languorous eyes as he gazed from afar across the wide expanse of blue carpet, felt that he was hedged about with the identical constraints as she. Had it been otherwise, the insatiable thirst which consumed them would have driven them into one another's arms immediately the door had closed upon the outside world, and the turbulent waters of passion would have submerged them, leaving them with neither regrets nor shame when they came to the surface again. Today the banality of a conventional discovery stood like a barrier between them. In the twilight hours, as he sat with Othello in his room, the thought of death sprang at him, attacking him unexpectedly, from the rear. But now he had no other thought at all than to come to some sort of an understanding with this woman.

An hour of torturing suspense found them at last in that sphere which their natures shared in common: their passion. Olivia, wearied with pacing the tiny room like a wild beast in a cage, had thrown herself, distraught and exhausted, upon the divan, and Andreas, who felt that at any cost this state of tension must be snapped, flung himself upon her and with shameless cynicism took that which in no way he desired. And yet, maybe, it was this rough handling which she needed for the appeasement of her uneasy soul. She yielded to his embraces with the frosty delight of a hetaira, wrapping herself round in the mantle of fleshly lust as if in defiance, as if to shield herself from a foe.

Yet when they emerged from this dread battlefield, they had found themselves and they had found each other. The lassitude with which love's combat had so often before made limp their limbs, filling their souls with a strange and voluptuous horror, was now, after this present possession, bordering as it did upon the realm of hate, to leave them benumbed, inert, as if death's hand were upon them. Bitterness, the bitterness Olivia had dreamed of these twenty years, the draught whose waters she had first tasted in Andreas's arms, now submerged her, covering her face, her body, as with a grievous mask. She felt the flesh of her cheeks, her brow, her chin, her throat, filmed over as it were with a strange, green patina like that which covers very ancient bronzes, while her body seemed crushed and broken beneath the man who lay like a corpse across her.

A chance movement at last released them from the spell. Andreas said:

"Why continue?"

The words fell into the great pool of tragical silence with a sound as warm and gentle as that of woodwind after brass.

"We should soon have been consumed in our own fires. It is well that the man should die, his heart pierced by so tiny a thing as a bullet. But the woman must live!"

She scarcely heard what he said. All she felt sure of was that he had surrendered himself to his destiny, that a strange, far-away voice was telling her what she had known since yesterday: "It may not be just, but it is perfectly logical, that Andreas should perish at Gregor's hands." Age-long and primeval things had surged up within her. In the half-ruinous crypts of her soul, after millennial sleep, feelings, judgments, rights, belonging to an ancient line whose origins were lost in the mists of time, now stirred, revealing to her, who had imagined such primeval impulses to be dead, that she was indeed a true daughter of her race, and that in her veins too the same blood flowed. Vague memories of fights long past merged themselves with present-day combats in her brain. In the mechanical processes of thought, Gregor once more stood before her as a young man, the descendant of a long succession of counts, bearing every advantage in his hands; for now he was to use the weapons familiar to all members of his caste, and to use them against a stripling who had moved away from the customary pursuits of several generations of learning in an inward, spiritual sense only, not by practical experience. She, who had always been out of tune with his plans for worldly advancement, who had been ever more and more strongly convinced that his urge towards the practical field of politics and diplomacy was in truth only the outcome of imaginative yearnings, felt today more keenly than ever that he was a poet first, last, and all the time, and that his invasion of the practical world would recoil on his own head.

Andreas swung his legs over the divan and sat on the edge. Olivia leaned on her elbow as was her custom, and surveyed the length of her body. Then she said softly, as if lying in wait for his reply:

"Not long now, Andreas."

The words, and the queer way she added his name as an afterthought, struck him by their strange ambiguity. He tried to jest:

"You are right, it is two o'clock," he said, glancing at the little timepiece over the fireplace.

He did not know Diana's bedroom, nor could he know what she was doing at the moment; and yet her form, her voice, appeared clearly to his memory, at that instant when she, too, was saying the same words while glancing at a similar clock. Incontinently he asked Olivia: "Where's the count? At home?"

"He went out before I left. The servant said he had gone off in the motor boat."

She held her peace and he, too, was silent. But Olivia's thoughts ranged wide, and she asked after a considerable interval:

"Do you still love Diana?"

He flushed a little for she had read his thoughts, and countered with:

"Do you love the count?"

Olivia stirred. She put her right foot to the ground, and at the same time drew the coverlet over her naked limbs as far as the waist. Then she leaned her right arm on to the low table at the head of the divan, and, drawing up her knee, clasped it round with her left hand. A smile, at once wise and tragical, flitted across her habitually solemn features. She gazed straight before her.

There rose upon her vision a castle overlooking the sea. Wedding festivities were in progress. Two evenings earlier Gregor had been sitting near her in her low-ceilinged, wainscoted room, and he had watched her, from the embrasure in the window, combing her long, golden hair. Suddenly he had sprung to his feet, had seized her in his arms, had stepped over to the door and slipped the bolt, and had had his will of the astonished bride. For him it was probably no more than a dare-devil escapade, the gratification of a young man's vanity; but her heart went out to him in thanks, for her stormy nature felt a repugnance of displaying the squeamishness of a maiden who, though betrothed, has not yet been legally wedded. Many years later, in the midst of the disappointments of her married life, her imagination was still pleasurably stimulated by the thought of that adventurous impropriety which had been the herald of their nuptial day.

"At one time I loved him," she said at last in a calm voice strangely resembling the tone in which Diana was speaking those same words at that same hour. Her alto gave the phrase a richer, fuller sound, maybe; she uttered it, too, with greater solemnity to match the heaviness of her nature as compared with Diana's elasticity and lightsomeness.

Like an endless band, her life with Gregor unrolled itself before her vision in retrospect. They were out hunting, the horn sounded in the air, she was riding in advance of the others. Now she was walking slowly, like a beast heavy with young. Those were the months just before Clemens was born. She saw Gregor's gleeful face as he tossed the baby, and how he played with the child in those early years. Then she saw him drift away from her, she heard the whispers of friends, the advice of the family doctor, her mother's anger; it seemed as if her own recollection of these troublous days was becoming dimmer, as if the measures taken by her relatives, their aid and their claims, were receding more and more into the background. Now she was always alone, she took no further part in the hunts, but rode by herself, galloped, put her horse to jumps that only a madman would attempt. She fell and lay for long where she had fallen. Peasants found her and carried her home. Long months she kept her bed, motionless. It was at that time she had acquired her taste for recumbency. She read much, read and pondered. Sometimes she would write letters which were never posted. She probed and sampled the many who came to her house; in her, distrust of the higher circles of society grew to irony, irony to cynicism. A sculptor had once wished to model her, but Gregor had refused to let her sit to the man; such opposition roused her desire, and for a while she was restless and agitated. Then the post of ambassador had come their way. She saw their new, palatial dwelling, heard the congratulations, pictured again the mighty waters upon whose bosom she wished, all in vain, to sail alone, gazed upon the immemorial park which reminded her so poignantly of the home of her fathers, contemplated the blue carpet she loved, alone, all alone, always alone, for Gregor had long since vanished from the landscape, and even the child was lost in distant mist-wreaths. Now, the poet entered her blue room, and she was recalled from her dream, back into the world of reality, back to the present hour.

Meanwhile Andreas had been gazing his fill at the majestic creature before him, the woman who lay as it seemed on a rock emerging from a vast blue sea, her eyes grave, overshadowed by a dark and monstrous bird with pinions wide spread behind her. The beat of those giant wings caused a wind which ruffled his hair; he knew that those were the wings of the angel of death and he gazed on them unafraid. The vision and the night filled his passionate nature with a contentment he had never experienced before, so that as she now looked up at him her eyes met a countenance at once so earnest and so taciturn that she felt she must be gazing into her own soul.

They suddenly realized that this was the moment of their leave-taking. Slowly they drew nearer to each other, body to body, lip to lip, in a long farewell.

Four hours later three carriages drew up near a little pinewood where many westerners had ere this met in mortal combat. Gregor was accompanied by Kopp and the major; Andreas by two compatriots from the Austrian embassy; the prince by a doctor. Abdul ran by the side of the first carriage, eager as if going to the chase. He had escaped just as his master was leaving the embassy and none had been able to catch him.

It was raining. The fog lay like a canopy over their heads as they took up their positions. The prince tested the pistols, handed them to the seconds for their examination; hardly a word was spoken. Andreas was wearing a grey morning suit; Gregor his loose and easy blue jacket. The prince measured the distance; gave each a weapon.

Andreas was himself amazed at his own coolness. On the drive hither he had been thinking: "Nikolai will publish my last poems.... My sister will hang my portrait in the old garden house, next to father's, in a black frame...." Now, when they had led him to his place and he could look his opponent in the eyes, he thought: "Yes, he is a lovable man; I understand Diana's choice better than I do Olivia's. I wonder if Diana will weep when she gets my letter? I have never seen her cry...."

Gregor was thinking: "He is still very young." And immediately thereafter: "Scoundrel! What is the countess to him?" He looked towards the prince from whom the signal was to come.

The prince asked:

"Ready?"

"Ready," came the reply.

"Fire!"

The two men stood unscathed.

The prince thought:

"What madness! As if a woman's part in life were not to bind men in friendship rather than to separate them!"

While thus thinking he stepped up and changed the weapons.

"Attention! Fire!"

Gregor fell to the ground. The prince raised an arm. Kopp, who was holding the dog in leash, was dragged forward by the outraged animal. Doctor and umpire hastened to the wounded man's side. Gregor did not stir, a little blood was oozing through his clothes on the left side. The doctor cast a look of intelligence at the men who had gathered round. The prince formally declared the duel at an end.

At first Andreas did not in the least understand what had happened. He looked inquiringly at his seconds. One of them went over to where the count lay. Then he beckoned to Andreas. The young man approached. He found four men busied round Gregor. The doctor was giving an injection of camphor; he was pouring brandy into the prostrate man's mouth. Five minutes passed. At last Gregor opened his eyes, looked at the circle of men, realized from the expression on their faces and from his own feeling of weakness, from a strange sensation near his heart, that all was over with him.

The others pushed Andreas forward. The count contemplated the young man for a while, critically rather than wrathfully. He was silent. Then he held out his hand and Andreas took it in his own. "Impossible," the poet thought. "He cannot be more than slightly wounded. He'll be all right again in a few minutes. Then..." He felt himself tapped on the shoulder; he drew back, slowly, as if his senses were befogged. Abdul was whining at his master's side. The dog had growled at Andreas's approach. Then, he laid a paw ever so lightly on the master's breast, cautiously, a caress as airy as gossamer lest the touch should hurt the dying man.

Gregor tried to rise. Impossible! He mused: "Better lie quiet, absolutely quiet, then, perhaps, I'll be able to say a few words." With a look, he bade the prince come nearer. The other three withdrew. The prince knelt close beside him. Gregor looked him in the eyes, assembling his forces for a last endeavour. Then, very slowly, in short-pulsed sentences:

"I beg you—to see that—Muthesius is not—given the post—as ambassador—otherwise—everything will be ruined—Tell His Majesty—yourself—personally, Prince—personally—I would recommend—Winterthur—He shares my views—Promise me you'll..."

The prince slipped his hand into the limp hand beside him. He knew his chief was nearing the end. A few minutes went by. Again the lips moved, but all Gregor had strength to say was:

"My love to—my love to—the ladies...."

His eyes glazed over; another fifteen seconds passed; he fell back, dead.

CHAPTER NINE

"No messenger yet, and it's nine o'clock. Mary, can't you see a boat on the water?"

"Nothing at all."

"Have you sent Ali on to the roof to look out?"

"Ali's been up there since seven."

"Mary, tell them to saddle my horse. I'll go myself..."

"But suppose they take the water-way?"

"You're right. Oh my God, this waiting!..."

When Diana had let Gregor out by the garden gate in the chilly hour before sunrise, she had said in her heart: "Never again. You will see him no more." It was only by exercising supreme control that she had been able to give him a parting look of encouragement and comfort. But as she stood once more on the balcony watching the day emerge in rain from beyond the grey horizon of the sea, her hopes revived: "Was he not always the lucky one?" To which an inner voice replied: "No, he was lonely."—"But does not the world spirit need him more than it does Andreas?"—"Who can tell?"—"Andreas is young; maybe the soul of a genius slumbers within him."—"And even so, what does a bullet care?"

Half past nine. Ali calls out that he sees a little cloud of dust in the distance; then a rider. Diana hastens up to the roof. She may perhaps be able to guess the news by the rider—Felix? Kopp? A servant?—— The prince! Gregor is dead! Only on Gregor's account would the prince be the messenger—— In any other case it would be Felix....

Yet might it not mean that both had been wounded? Over and over again the words were hammered out by her pulsating heart. Groping blindly she again found herself in the hall. "What am I hoping for? What am I still afraid of? Mary! Mary, go to meet him.—No, Mary, stay, don't go.—Ali, open the door." Forcibly she kept herself in the hall, waiting. The prince approached. He bit his lips. Diana dared not put the question that tortured her. At last, as if Diana were concerned with one only of the two duellists, he said:

"A bullet in the heart, at the second shot. Eight minutes later, he was dead."

Slowly Diana turned away, and leaned against a pillar. For a while she remained thus, saying nothing. Certainty, even of the worst, brought peace, of a kind; and yet her whole being seemed dumb and void. A painful clarity of vision made her aware of every detail in the material world, and she saw the little steamers plying up and down on the waters. "Ah yes, the nine o'clock boat. Late again," she thought.

Now she turned to her guest.

"You are hot with your ride," said she. "It is very good of you to have come yourself.... His household is probably... Who told the countess? You?"

The prince nodded. She begged him to be seated, herself took a chair, crossing her legs in her short serge skirt.

Again she was speaking: "Olivia has much strength of character, and has probably been just as anxious on the poet's behalf...."

He thought: "She's steeling herself by speaking of others. Does she feel it deeply?"

He rose to go.

"Already?"

"Sorry, but I'm afraid I must. There's much to do. We have to discuss the funeral arrangements. We may have to take his remains back to Germany."

"Of course—— But—did the count say anything—?"

"Yes, to me. Recommendations as to his successor."

"Winterthur," said Diana quietly.

"Yes," confirmed the prince, realizing how fully Gregor had trusted this woman. Then he took leave.

But as he reached the door, Eduard turned:

"Forgive me, but I forgot... I have one other thing to tell you—a message...."

"To me?"

Diana, who knew how reserved Gregor was by nature, was deeply moved at the thought that her lover had sent her a farewell greeting. The prince had besought the major to let him come to break the news to Diana solely on account of this last message. He found it difficult to speak.

"You will have to judge for yourself. The very last words the count uttered were: 'My love to the ladies'..."

Diana had listened with dilated eyes; she gripped the back of a chair; she stood silent. Then she sat down and was about to hide her face in her hands, when suddenly great tears were coursing down her cheeks. The prince, uncertain whether he should go or not, took a step towards the door. But she stayed him with a gesture, and he brought up a chair and sat down beside her.

Like water purling through a wood, this cool, proud woman's tears flowed down her face. From afar he had always admired her amazing self-possession, but even in this moment of her grief he could only think of Gregor's happy end. He had the melancholy recognition that he would never be able to woo and win a woman of this kind.

A long time passed before Diana raised her head. With a calm mien she now looked at her visitor. Then she wiped her eyes, smiled, and with a complete change of voice, like one who does not wish to disturb a sleeper's rest, she murmured:

"What a tender thing to have said; only a fully mature man could have sent such a message. Don't you think so too? I wonder if the countess will understand? Oh, surely she cannot fail to do so. Tell her, please tell her Prince, that by these words of a dying man she and I..."

From the landing-stage came voices, interrupting her whispered plea. She listened without stirring; the prince did likewise. He would have given much that nothing should come to trouble her in this, her hour of weakness and of confiding trust. At last he rose and went on to the balcony to see who the intruder might be. Simultaneously, Diana recognized the voice as that of the major.

"What can he be wanting?" she said petulantly.

"Can't think! He knew that I..."

Felix came in; hesitated a moment when he saw how pensive she was; then he said urgently:

"Forgive me for coming so early. No time to waste. Mademoiselle, you must go, at once."

Diana, whose heart had expanded under the influence of the dead man's last words and the noble dignity of her living friend, was refractory to any interruption, and was especially offended by the major's loud voice and inopportune intervention. She asked scathingly:

"Go? And why, pray? I have no intention of going."

"Sorry to insist, but the matter is urgent."

Diana got up, tossed her head, pulled her blouse to rights in her waistband, and said in a changed voice:

"What has happened?"

Felix was wounded by her manner. He assumed an official tone, and announced, as if he were reading a telegram:

"Just heard, that ministry here, been informed duel on your account. Foreign secretary wishes to profit by fact that you are temporarily unprotected to have you arrested as spy. Embassy cannot intervene on your behalf. Linnartz taken over running of affairs. Advise you to go at once."

Diana was by now regaining her usual clarity of mind.

"In that case I shall have to go. But I shall need a passport if I go by rail or passenger steamer, and arrest will be practically inevitable.... A little boat will be the only way of escape."

Felix nodded, and a twinkle in his eye was an indication of how much he relished the similarity of her nature and his when there was a question of having to make a decision or to take a comprehensive survey of the matter in hand.

"You have immediately grasped the sole possibility. I have already sent word to old Mohammed...."

"Thoroughly trustworthy fellow, in spite of being an Arab," interjected the prince.

"He has two dhows, a big one and a little one."

"We'll take the larger," said Diana promptly.

Felix nodded.

"It'll be ready in half an hour. The farther quay, south of the commercial harbour. Can you be ready by then?"