Chapter VI

ONE Sunday, as he got out of bed, the Prince felt like singing. Perhaps he was unconsciously following the example of some birds, which, deceived by the Spring-like warmth of a midwinter's day, had been warbling in the eaves of Villa Sirena since sunrise.

He looked out of his bedroom window. The Mediterranean, without a single sail, stretched away in far-off undulations, to where it met the sky. The gulls were wheeling in circles, continually drooping into the water, folding their wings, and letting themselves be carried along by the waves. The sandy depths, stirred by the swells, gave the blue sea a lighter shade, which attained, along the shore, an opalescent hue, like that of absinthe. Around the promontory, white luminous foam was constantly being churned among the projecting rocks of the reefs.

The Prince heard voices above him. Castro and Spadoni were talking from window to window. The mysterious call of the early morning beauty had caused them to jump out of bed. They were admiring the sky, which did not have a trace of mist to dim the brightness of its farthest reaches. The mountains stood out in extraordinary relief: they seemed larger and nearer. Above Cap-Martin, the Italian Alps descended to the sea, their outlying buttress, at the water's edge, white with the frontier towns: Vintimiglia and Bordighera.

Through some freak of the atmosphere, a dense, elongated cloud, like a snow-covered island, was floating directly overhead in the clear sky. Its whiteness seemed to radiate an inner light.

"I recognize it," Atilio said with a tone of conviction to the musician, who did not seem to tire of looking at it. "I have seen it often. When the day turns out too bright, the Directors of the Casino are afraid that the patrons may be bored by so much sunlight, and the vast expanse of azure: blue sea and blue sky. 'Have the big cloud brought out,' they order over the telephone. You must have noticed that that cloud always appears from behind the mountains. That's where the Casino has its storehouses. They don't neglect details here when it comes to entertaining their patrons."

Michael heard two exclamations: one of surprise and the other of indignation. Next he heard the sound of a window suddenly closed. The pianist, not in a mood for joking at so early an hour, was going back to bed, to sleep until lunch time.

The Prince hurried through his toilet. He felt the need of getting out and going somewhere, as though his gardens seemed too small for him. In the distance the bells of Monte Carlo were ringing, and still farther off those of Monaco were replying; and the merry pealing of the chimes caused the clear brittle air to vibrate like a crystal glass.

He went down stairs slowly, trying not to make any noise, and when he reached the gate he breathed freely. He had not met any of his companions, not even the Colonel. As though attracted by the Sunday morning atmosphere of gaiety which, as the afternoon wears on, changes to tiresome ennui, he decided to walk to the city alone.

Outside the gate, a girl was waiting for the street car. She was very young; but her feet slanted at a sharp angle on her high-heeled shoes. Her skirt, falling scarcely below her knees, showed her well-rounded calves. The finely woven stockings revealed the whiteness of her flesh. Prominent against the salmon colored silk sweater, was a necklace of large imitation amber beads. Her hair, cut short just below the ears, fell smoothly from underneath a jaunty velvet tam o'shanter of graceful line. The air of profound respect with which she spoke to him made him recognize her. It was the gardener's daughter. But at the same time she looked at him in a sly way with ill-concealed curiosity, as though her eyes made a distinction between the master and the man whom women adored and of whom she had heard so many things.

The Prince went on, after speaking to her as he would have to a young lady of his own social rank. He was gay that morning, and he laughed inwardly as he thought how later on that little bundle of mischief and ambition would keep men busy. Then he thought of Don Marcos, and what Atilio had told him. Poor Colonel! Imagine a person, at his age, trying to tame a young wildcat!

He walked lightly, with a springy step, in the direction of Monte Carlo. He passed the villas and the gardens as though contact with the ground had given his step fresh vigor, and as though the Spring-like air had abrogated to some extent the laws of gravity.

When he reached the city he stopped in front of the steps of San Carlos Church. Through the door he could see the twinkling tapers, smell the odor of flowers, and hear the droning of the organ, and the voices of young girls singing. He felt like a boy once more, buoyant and fresh as the morning, and had an impulse to follow the various families, in their Sunday best, who were ascending the steps. He was a Catholic through his father, a member of the Greek church through his mother, and nothing by his own inclination. Suddenly he felt a certain repugnance for the cave-like darkness, laden with perfumes, and dotted with lights. So he went on, breathing the open air with delight.

"Oh, your Ladyship! Good morning!"

A long, thin female hand shook his with masculine vigor. The brass buttons of her khaki colored uniform, like that of an English soldier, were gleaming in the sun. The uniform, instead of being completed by breeches, ended in a short skirt and tan leather leggings.

It was Lewis's niece. She had spent two afternoons at Villa Sirena rambling about the gardens. Once more Michael observed her unhealthy emaciation, which was beginning to take on the miserable appearance of consumption. Her Sam Brown belt buried itself in her blouse, as though failing to meet the resistance of a body underneath the cloth. The face under the visor of the military cap was as sharp as a knife. Her skin, drawn and lined in spite of her youth, showed all the bones and hollows. It was impossible to judge her age: she might have been twenty-five, or she might have been sixty. Only the eyes had retained their freshness; eyes that still kept the guilelessness of adolescence, and looked one squarely in the face with the serene confidence of a virgin sure of her strength.

She had gone through the horrors of war, as through a flame that dries up and parches everything it touches, and in the end converts it to dust. She was like a mummy, burned by the fire of the blazing towns that she had seen, and shaken by the tears and moans of thousands of human beings. "Think what those ears have heard!" Michael said to himself. And he understood the sad expression of the pale mouth which hung wearily between two drooping furrows. "And think what those eyes have seen!" he continued mentally. But the eyes did not care to remember and smiled at him, happy in the present moment.

She had just come out of a large hotel converted into a hospital, and was waiting for the street car to go to Menton. More wounded soldiers had arrived there, and owing to the scarcity of nurses the doctors had been obliged to accept her services. For the present they would not bother her any more with solicitude about her health! As she thought of the hard work that lay before her, of the long night watches, and the fight with death to save so many lives, she was filled with joy. She was anxious, as though she were going to a celebration to take the short trip as soon as possible, and seeing the car coming, she shook hands with the Prince again, with a firm grip.

"I shall go on abusing your permission. Next time I shall pillage your gardens even worse. Flowers ... lots of flowers! If you would only see the joy they give the poor fellows when you put them beside the beds! Some of the doctors are vexed; they think it is silly. But all I say is: as long as we have to die, why not die with a little poetry, with something around us to remind us of the beauty we are losing. It doesn't hurt any one."

Lubimoff went on his way, but his heart was less light. This woman, fighting death so generously and so manfully, seemed to have torn away the rosy veil that had made his eyes rejoice.

Everything was the same, but of a darker hue, as though he were looking at the landscape through smoked glasses. He noticed things which he had not observed until then. The large hotels had been converted into hospitals. Their porches and large balconies were filled with men basking in the sun; men whose heads were white balls, bound with bandages that left only the eyes and mouth visible; half finished men, as it were, lacking a leg or an arm, like a sculptor's rough models. Others were lying motionless, with both legs amputated, like corpses in a dissecting room, but still breathing.

On the sidewalks he met soldiers of various nations: French, English, Serbian, officers, and a few Russians, who reminded him of the former importance his country had had in the war. Every variety of uniform worn by the various armies of the French Republic passed before his eyes: the horizon blue of the home troops, the mustard color of the soldiers from Morocco, the yellow fatigue caps of the Foreign Legion, and the red fez of the Algerians and the negro Sharpshooters.

Each one was maimed. This sunny land, with its lovely views of sea and sky, seemed peopled with a race that had survived a cataclysm. Elegantly dressed officers, with handsome figures, limped along, cautiously dragging one leg, or else stepping gingerly on a foot so swathed in bandages that it was several times its natural size. Some of them were leaning on canes, bent over like old men. Men of athletic proportions trembled as they walked, as though their skeletons were rattling about in the hollow wrapper of their bodies wasted by consumption. Fingers were missing on hands; arms had been cut off until the shapeless stumps looked like fins. Under their pads of cotton, cheeks retained the gashes made by hand grenades, scars like those left by cancer; the horrible cavity of the nose, which had been torn away in some of the men, was hidden by a black tampon attached to the ears. The faces of others were covered by masks of bandages, leaving nothing visible save the eyes—sad eyes that seemed to look with fear to the day when they would have to grow accustomed to the horror of a face that a few months before had been youthful and now was like a vision in a nightmare. The bodies of some were intact, retaining their former strength and agility in all their limbs. Seen from behind they had kept all the vigor and suppleness of youth. But they walked abreast, holding tightly to one another's arms, their eyes lost in darkness, tapping the pavement with a stick which had taken the place of the vanished sword, and which would accompany them until the hour of their death.

And this procession of sadness and resignation, this grievous masquerade comforted by the joyousness of the morning, and feeling love of life once more renewed, was coming from the gardens. Others were going in the direction of the Casino and its terraces, passing among the Brazilian palm trees, with smooth, hollow trunks covered with elephant hide; among the cacti, held up by iron supports like a tangle of green reptiles bristling with thorns; among the prickly pears as high as trees; among the Himalayan fig trees, with towering trunks and wide spreading domes of branches which seemed to have been made to shelter the motionless meditation of the fakirs; among all the trees that come from tropical and temperate America, from China, Australia, Abyssinia, and South Africa. A tiny rivulet descended the slope in zig-zags through the openings in the green lawn, forming back waters among the bamboos and Japanese palms, until it flowed into a miniature lake, bordered with foliage, as tranquil, pleasing, and dainty as one of those centerpieces in which the water is represented by a mirror.

Michael stopped in the upper gardens to look at the Casino from a distance. He had never realized before the fussiness and bad taste of the architecture of this building, which was the heart of Monaco. If the "gingerbread monument"—as Castro called it—closed its doors, all Monte Carlo would be wrapped in a deathly stillness like the loneliness of those cities which in former centuries were ports, and now are sleepy and deserted, far from the sea, which has withdrawn. It was the work of the architect of the Paris Opera House, an ornate, gaudy, childish structure, of the color of soft butter, with multi-colored roofs, balconied turrets, niches with nameless statues, many tile friezes and gilded mosaics. At the corners there were green porcelain escutcheons, imitating roughly cut emeralds. The outstanding decorative motif of this building, famous throughout the world, was the imitation of gold and precious stones.

Owing to the prosperity of the establishment, they had added to the main body flanked with four towers, an extensive wing in which the best gaming rooms were located. Various green and yellow cupolas of different sizes revealed the existence of the latter, rising above the upper balustrade. On this balustrade a number of bronze angels or genii, entirely nude and with golden wings, had been set up. With black extended arms they were offering golden tributes, the significance of which no one had been able to guess. Other white or metal statues of half nude women were sheltered in the niches in the walls, and the names and significance of these were likewise a mystery.

Although the edifice was erected with the pretense of dazzling and charming with its gold and soft colors, those who went there paid scarcely any attention to its splendors.

"The ones who are arriving," Castro would say, "go in on the run; they want to get placed at the gaming tables as soon as possible. The ones who are coming out take a gloomy view of everything; and even though the Casino were as beautiful as the Parthenon, they would take it for a robber's cave."

The Prince looked to the right of the building, where a strip of blue sea was visible, with the hairy trunks and rounded tops of a few Japanese palms standing out against the blue. There at the entrance to the terraces along the Mediterranean rose the only two monuments of the city, dedicated to the fame of two musicians from the simple fact that some of their works had been played for the first time in the theater of the Casino. Carved in marble, Berlioz and Massenet greeted with a vague stare in their sightless eyes the cosmopolitan crowd that came to the gambling house. "They are honorary croupiers," Castro used to say.

"Massenet—that isn't so bad," thought Michael. "He was fortunate, he had money, and his gifts were recognized during his lifetime. But imagine Berlioz, who spent his years struggling against poverty and public indifference, standing guard after death over the Casino's millions!"

Next, he looked at the foreground, observing the open Square in front of the edifice. There was a round garden in the center. People called it the "cheese" and some even particularized and called it the "Camembert."

Around the garden rail and on the benches backing up to it, one could observe the living soul of Monte Carlo. Here people gathered, to exchange jokes and gossip, ask news from those who were coming out of the Casino, and comment on the good or bad fortune of the most celebrated gamblers.

In the immediate neighborhood, there were no business houses except jewelry stores, branches of the government pawn shop, and millinery shops. Women who played small stakes felt like satisfying their longing for an expensive hat on coming out of the Casino. Those who needed fresh capital to carry out their systems had only to take a few steps to pawn their valuables. In the show windows of the jewelry shops, pearl necklaces worth a million francs and emeralds worth three hundred thousand, were exhibited during the winter, waiting for a buyer; and in summer they were sent to the fashionable bathing resorts to continue being a mute and dazzling temptation. The jewelers, with Semitic profiles, were waiting behind their counters, more for sellers than buyers, and calmly offered a fourth of the price for a gem bought in that very shop the year before.

From a distance it was easy for the Prince to guess the character of the many people who at that early hour were sitting on the benches opposite the stairs leading up to the edifice. Here those condemned to misery by gambling, and accursed by fate, remained all day, suffering the most atrocious torment of living close to the door of the sanctuary without being able to enter. They had lost their last cent, and the directors of the establishment, who generously send ruined gamblers back to their respective countries, had handed over the viaticum to them for their return. But they had staked the money given to aid them and had lost; and since they were debtors to the Casino they could not reënter it until they had fulfilled their obligations. So there they remained, stranded in the Square for all time, with the false hope of getting some money. None of them had any idea of how or from what source. They mingled together there in the companionship of misery, watching for fellow-countrymen who were better off, to besiege them with requests for a loan; or else they spent their time discussing numbers and colors. Perhaps they would succeed in getting together a few francs after turning all their pockets inside out, and they might choose, as the emissary of their illusions, a comrade who was as poor as they, but who had not "taken the viaticum" and was free to enter.

Michael saw a crowd of people extending as far as the Japanese palm trees, near the Massenet monument. They had just arrived by various street cars from Nice. They were all hurrying, anxious to enter the motley edifice as soon as possible, as though fortune were expecting them in the gaming rooms and might leave at any moment, tired of waiting.

He looked at the clock above the façade. It was ten o'clock. The daily occupations were being resumed and the devotees who lived in Monte Carlo were likewise flocking there, and mingling with the people who had come from other places. They all mounted the marble steps, following the three stair-carpets held in place by brass rods that glistened in the sun.

"And to think that we're at war!" Michael thought. "And many of those who have gotten up early to make the trip, and those who live here, too, have sons or brothers or husbands, who at the present moment are fighting, and dying perhaps!"

Love of life, love of pleasure, and the vain hope of winning, worked like an anæsthetic, causing them all to rise above their worries and forget, so that they were able to live entirely in the present moment.

This general rush for the opening of the gaming hall disgusted the Prince and caused him to halt in his descent of the gentle slope of the gardens. It was repugnant to him to mix with the crowd that was loitering in the neighborhood of the Casino.

His desire to retrace his steps gave him an idea. "Supposing you go and surprise Alicia at her home? She would be so pleased!"

She had been at Villa Sirena twice since her first visit. A chance meeting in the street with the Prince, when she was walking along with her friend Clorinda, had served as a pretext for another visit to the refuge in their beautiful gardens of "the enemies of women." He found the "General" less hostile and dominating than he had imagined; but he could not understand Castro's passion for her. In spite of her beauty it seemed to him that he was talking to a man. They had been accompanied by Valeria, a young French girl, who had been a protégée of Alicia's, a traveling companion in the days of dazzling wealth, and who now accompanied her in poverty, out of gratitude and fidelity. Later the Duchess de Delille had returned alone a second time to consult him about various projects for her future, all of them lacking in common sense; and she had finally accepted a loan of a thousand francs. Luck was against her in gambling: she needed new "tools to work with." The capital that had irritated her so by never varying, never going much above thirty thousand, had finally heard her complaints, and dwindled with lightning rapidity, leaving merely a few remnants of its former self.

In spite of the Prince's loan the Duchess had complained.

"I'm always the one who is looking you up: you never deign to visit my house. How poor I really am!"

Remembering her humble protest, the Prince no longer hesitated. Turning his back on the Casino, he began to ascend the sloping streets in the direction of the frontier line separating Monte Carlo from Beausoleil; streets that displayed names recalling Spring: the Street of the Roses, of the Carnations, of the Violets, of the Orchids.

He entered a short avenue formed by a double row of garden fences. He caught a glimpse of the houses between the columns of palm trees, and the firm leaves of the large magnolias. As he went along he read the names of the small estates carved on little plaques of red marble, placed at the entrance to the grounds. "Villa Rosa", here it was. He pushed open the iron gate, which was ajar, without hearing the sound of a voice or the barking of a dog to greet his presence. He saw a small garden half deserted, overgrown with weeds at the foot of the untrimmed trees, and covering the space that had formerly been occupied by flower beds. The rest was more carefully tended, but it was a vegetable garden with rectangles of kitchen stuffs intensively cultivated.

Lubimoff approached without meeting anyone. It occurred to him that the gardener must have been the man with the dog, whom he had met as he turned into the street.

Then he mounted the four steps at the entrance. Here too the door was half ajar, and upon pushing it all the way open, he found himself in a hallway with stairs leading to the upper story.

There was no one in sight. He tried the doors of the adjoining rooms and found them locked. There was not a sound. It was as though the house were deserted. But the silence was suddenly broken by a voice floating down the stairway. It was a faint voice, singing a slow, sad English air. The song was accompanied by a sound of dull blows, as though hands were beating and shaping up some large unresisting object.

Michael thought he recognized Alicia's voice. He coughed several times without result; he was not heard. He was about to call to let her know that he was there, but refrained, through a sudden impulse to play a little joke on her. Why shouldn't he surprise her by going up-stairs the one part of the house where she was now living, he thought? His hesitation vanished. Up-stairs he would go!

From the first landing he saw several doors, but only one was open; and it was from that one that the sounds of the song and the thumping were coming. A woman bending over a bed, was holding out her arms and vigorously shaking up a pillow. Instinctively she felt that some one was standing behind her, and turning around she gave an exclamation of surprise on seeing Michael in the doorway. The latter was no less surprised to recognize the woman as Alicia; an Alicia dressed in an elegant but old négligée, with crumpled gloves on her hands, and a veil wrapped around her hair.

"You! It's you!" she exclaimed. "How you frightened me!"

Immediately she recovered her composure, and smiled at the Prince, as the latter tried to excuse himself. He had not met any one; the gate and the door had been open. She, in turn, now excused herself. It was Sunday; Valeria, her companion, had gone to Nice to take lunch with a family she knew; her maid and the gardener's wife were at mass; the old man had gone out a moment before to see some friends.

After these mutual explanations they both remained silent, looking at each other hesitatingly, not knowing what to say, but still smiling.

"You making your bed!" he remarked, just to say something.

"So you see. This is rather different from my bedroom in Paris. It is hardly the 'study' that I took you to either. Times have changed!"

Michael gravely nodded assent. Yes, times had changed.

"At any rate," she continued, "you must confess that there is a certain novelty in seeing the Duchess de Delille, madcap Alicia, making her bed."

The Prince nodded again. Indeed it was a novelty: something one could not see every day.

Alicia persisted in her explanations. It had not been at all hard for her to do housework. She cleaned her room herself, in order to save her elderly maid the extra bother. She did not want Valeria to help her. They were each keeping their own rooms in order, now that help was scarce. Besides, she herself sometimes went into the kitchen, and she would have liked to help the gardener cultivate the little garden, just for her own pleasure.

"We are living in war times; things are getting dearer every day, and as for me, I'm poor. We ought to return to the simple primitive life. But I don't dare work in the garden, on account of the neighbors. They watch you all the time from their windows. There is a Brazilian gentleman, even, who seems to have fallen in love with me."

She herself was proud of her industriousness. Who would ever have guessed such qualities some years before in the mistress of the luxurious residence on the Avenue du Bois, who was in the habit of getting up at three o'clock in the afternoon?

"I owe it all to mamma. She had me educated in a girls' school in England, when it was the fashion to substitute domestic work for the physical exercise of sports. I think it's called 'Corinthianism.' And I feel better than ever. In the old days I had to get up several mornings a week with Valeria and Clorinda and go to a tennis club and play until I was exhausted. Now, after taking care of my room and helping with the others I don't need any exercise. I'm doing poor man's gymnastics."

There was a long silence. Michael looked at the room; a woman's bedroom, still in disarray, with clothes lying on the arm chairs, giving out the perfume of a fastidious femininity. Through a narrow door he saw a corner of the adjoining bath room, where a wet spot had been left on the mosaic floor, from the morning bath. An odor of eau de cologne and tooth paste hung in the air. From several toilet jars, in disorder, vague scents of more precious essences were escaping. Mingling with the toilet articles and objects of intimate apparel, he could distinguish cards such as are given out to the patrons of the Casino, to mark their plays; some with red or blue marks in the columns, others pricked with a hat pin, for lack of a pencil. He observed larger cards, with a roulette wheel indicating the numbers and colors; and also many books of the sort sold by the stationers and at newspaper stands; illuminating treatises on "How to win without fail in all kinds of play." On the mantelpiece, half hidden by various fashion magazines, was a small roulette wheel, a real one, used undoubtedly in studying out and trying various theories. On the lamp stand beside the bed the latest copy of the Monte Carlo Review was lying open, with statistics of all the winning numbers during the past week at the various tables; interesting reading, with mysterious annotations which had kept Alicia up perhaps till dawn.

In the meantime she was dexterously causing to disappear everything which she considered prejudicial to her appearance since the surprise. When Michael looked at her again the old gloves had vanished from her hands and the veil was hidden somewhere. Her hair, now left free, was black and lustrous, a trifle coarse, perhaps, but it rose luxuriantly in large ringlets in disarray.

They prolonged the silence with an embarrassed smile, as though neither of them could find a way of relieving the situation.

"Go on with your work," Michael said, somewhat timidly. "Now I'm here, I don't want to be in the way."

As though seeing a challenge to her embarrassment in these words, and anxious at the same time to show her skillfulness, she bent over the bed to continue her work. Michael regained his high spirits at this display of confidence. It wasn't chivalrous to allow her to work alone: he must help her.

"You! You!" exclaimed Alicia, laughing, as though such a proposition seemed to her unthinkable.

The Prince pretended to feel hurt. Yes: he! Wasn't he a sailor, and hadn't his adventurous life compelled him to know how to do a little of everything? More than once in his explorations in the wilds, he had had to make a bed as best he could, wrapped in blankets beside the embers of a fire.

He had gone over to the other side of the bed, and was imitating all the movements of the Duchess with comic exaggeration. He petted the pillows after her, with such violence as to make the bed resound. While she lifted it slightly toward her to shake it better, he lifted it completely with his strong hands.

"You don't know how! You don't know how!" Alicia exclaimed with childish glee.

Then, seeing his fingers seize the linen with a powerful grip, she added:

"Good heavens, let go of that: You'll tear the pillow, and just now, in these hard times!"

They both laughed, finding this work very amusing.

"Take hold!" she said in authoritative tones, and flung in his face a sheet that she was holding at the opposite side.

Michael found himself wrapped in a cloud of filmy linen fragrant with feminine perfumes. It was for an instant only, but to him it seemed like something extraordinary, of limitless duration, extending beyond the bounds of time and space. He had a presentiment that this insignificant event was going to be a turning point in his life. He felt his former self suddenly awaken with fresh vigor. Perhaps it was the stimulation due to continence. He thought of Castro's ironic smile, and of himself, living like a hermit there in Villa Sirena, and preaching hostility to women! There was a buzzing in his ears; his eyes, momentarily blinded, seemed to be gazing on a vast expanse of rosy sky, the pale, luscious rose color of a woman's flesh. There was something intoxicating in the sudden breath that caused his brain to reel, communicating the sensation to his whole organism, as violently as though struck with a lash. When the sheet had fallen back on the bed, Michael was deathly pale, with a look of intenseness gleaming in his eyes. She thought he was angry at the jest, and she laughed mischievously, leaning on the pillow with her hands. As she shook with laughter, the lace of her low-necked négligée trembled seductively on her breast and shoulders.

Suddenly the Prince found himself on the other side of the bed close to Alicia. Finally they both sat down on the edge of the bed, turning their backs on the forgotten sheet. He took one of her hands without realizing what he was doing. Then he bent so close to her face that one of her Medusa-like tresses brushed against his temple. He felt no desire to talk, but seeing her eyes, so close to his, he broke the pleasant silence.

"You have been weeping!"

The woman protested with a strained smile and grew pale as she stammered her excuses. No; perhaps it was the dust shaken up by the cleaning, or the effort of working. But he went on studying her eyes which were indeed slightly reddened.

"You were crying when I came in," he continued, with insistent and troubled curiosity.

Now Alicia's protest took the form of a harsh, shrill laugh, that was decidedly forced and unnatural. And by one of those modulations of which only great actors know the secret, the burst of her laughter died gradually into a sigh, then a groan, until, letting go the Prince's hand, she covered her eyes, and hung her head, while a fit of sobbing shook her whole body.

She was crying. It was enough that Michael should have discovered her recent weeping to cause the tears to rise in her eyes again, renewing her former anguish. She gave in to her grief with a sort of cruel delight, finding it preferable to the torture of feigning, which his unexpected visit had imposed.

The Prince remained silent for a few moments.

"Is it for that young fellow of yours?" he plucked up courage to ask, with a shaking voice as though he too were undergoing an unexplainable emotion.

She replied with a slight movement of her head, without taking her hands from her eyes. It was unnecessary for Michael to see them. He had guessed the truth on discovering the traces of tears. It could be only for him that she was weeping: the lack of news; the worry of thinking that he was a prisoner, far off, suffering all sorts of privations; and that perhaps she would never see him again.

"How you love him!"

The Prince was surprised himself at the tone of voice in which he said these words. There was a note of despair, envy, and sadness at the thought of the passing years, bequeathing to the coming generation the haughty privileges of youth.

The guests at Villa Sirena would also have been astonished to hear him talk in this fashion. Alicia's surprise caused her to forget all precaution as a pretty woman, and lift her head, as she took away her hands. Her face was red, her eyes tremulous and overflowing. A tear hung from a lock of hair. She realized that she must be looking terrible, but what did she care?

"Yes, I love him; I love him more than anything in the world. It is on his account that I go on living. If it weren't for him I would kill myself. But he isn't what you think. No, he isn't."

With her face so reddened with weeping, it was impossible to detect a blush; but her gestures, the expression of her face and the tone of her voice, rebelled with shame and indignation against the suspicion of the Prince.

She went on talking in a low voice, without daring to look at him, hurrying her words like a penitent anxious to get through with a difficult confession as soon as possible. On various occasions in talking with the Prince, the truth had come to her lips, and at the last moment the reticence of a woman still desirous of pleasing through her beauty had caused her to conceal the facts. But to whom could she reveal her secret better than to Michael? She considered him one of the family: he had received her in friendly fashion in her hour of need, when so many men had turned their backs on her. Besides, between a man and a woman, love is not the only feeling that can exist, as she had thought in the days of her mad youth. There were other less violent things, more placid and lasting: friendship, comradeship, and brotherly affection.

She paused for a moment, as though to gather strength.

"He is my son."

Michael, who was expecting some extraordinary, some monstrous revelation, worthy of her mad past, was unable to restrain an exclamation of astonishment:

"Your son!"

She nodded: "Yes, my son." With lowered eyes, she went on talking in the same nervous tone, as though she were making a confession. She went back over her past. How surprised she had been, how angry, at the cruel trick love had played in cutting off the best years of her life! Her indignation was like that of the citizens of Ancient Greece who began a riot when they learned of the pregnancy of a courtezan who was considered a national glory, a beauty whom the multitude came from afar to see, when she showed herself nude in the religious festivals. They were bent on killing her unborn child, as though it had been guilty of a sacrilege. Alicia, too, used to consider herself a living work of art, and wanted to punish the sacrilege of her child with death. What criminal attempts she had made to rid herself of the shame that was throbbing in her vitals! Besides, what tortures she had undergone in her efforts to hide it, to go on leading her life of pleasure as before, and suffer anything rather than permit her secret to escape! Returning from parties where she had seen herself admired as formerly yet always with the dread that her secret had been discovered, she would fall into fits of homicidal rage and rebelliously curse the being that persisted in living within her; and in paroxysms of wild hysteria she would devise ways and means of encompassing its destruction.

There were tears in her voice as she recalled these scenes.

"But how about your husband?" Michael asked.

"We separated at that time. He could tolerate my love affairs in silence: he could pretend not to know about them ... but a child that wasn't his own...!"

She recalled the attitude of the Duke de Delille. He had shown a dignity worthy of him. There had been many deceived husbands in his family: it had almost become a tradition of nobility, an historic distinction. He did not feel dishonored by selling his name in getting married in order to increase the pleasures and comforts of his life. His name that belonged to him was a tool to work with. But it was impossible for him to let that name get out of his family, to give it to an intruder to continue the line. His forefathers had had many illegitimate children; but it had never occurred to any of his gay women ancestors to introduce into the family descendants in whose creation their husbands could assume no responsibility whatever.

The Duke had separated from her, granting all her demands save that one. It was an adulterous son and it must disappear. And no one, except they two and the maid—who was still with her—were to know of the birth.

"There were times when I was quite happy," Alicia continued. "I learned to know new unsuspected joys. I would suddenly leave Paris: lots of people thought I was traveling with some new lover. No; I was going to see my little boy, my George; first in London, later in New York, but always in a large city. I could live with him, and play at being a mother, with a living doll that kept getting bigger and bigger ... bigger! Do you remember the night I invited you to dinner? I had just come back from one of those trips, and in spite of that, just think of the foolish things I said. I imagined myself Venus, or Helen, passing before the old men on the wall. And in order to give myself up completely to a paroxysm of maternal pride I was thinking of my heroines, who were also my rivals. Helen had had children, and men went on killing one another for her. Venus had not escaped maternity, and gods and mortals continued to adore her in spite of the fact that she had a son fluttering about the world. Maternity meant neither abdication of rights nor loss of prestige; she could go on being beautiful and being desired, like other women, after an incident that had seemed to her irremediable. So I went on living my life. Oh, when I think of how I sometimes shortened the time that I had intended to stay with him, in order to follow some man that scarcely interested me! Now that I haven't him, I think of the hours that I might have lived by his side, and that were given up to the first male that aroused my curiosity! It's my most terrible remorse; it gnaws at my conscience all night long, and drives me to gambling as the only remedy. I am certainly to be pitied, Michael."

But a fixed idea seemed to dominate Michael as he listened to her.

"And the father? Who is the father?"

The tone of his voice was practically the same as before: a tone of hostile curiosity, of aggressive spite.

Another wave of astonishment swept over him when he saw that she was shrugging her shoulders.

"I don't know; it doesn't make any difference to me. Other women, in like circumstances, fasten the paternity on the man they are most interested in. As though you could tell! I haven't picked out any one in particular from among my memories. They are all the same. I have forgotten them all. My son is mine, mine only."

She had the majestic indifference of the serene and fertile forest that opens its blossoms to the pollen scattered through the air like a golden rain of love. The new plant springs up. It belongs to the forest, and the forest keeps it, without showing any interest in learning the name and origin of the wandering source of life borne hither willy-nilly on the wind.

There was a long silence.

"One day, on arriving in New York," she continued, "I made a terrible discovery. I found my George almost as tall as I was, and strong looking, with the serious air of a grown man, though he wasn't quite eleven. I'm ashamed to think it; but I mustn't lie: I hated him. Venus might have a son, as long as the son remained eternally a little child through all the centuries, like one of those amusing babies that are dressed in a whimsical fashion, and are the mother's pride and amusement. But my own son, with his powerful body, his strong hands, and solemn face! It meant that I should grow old before my time; I should have to renounce my youth if I kept him by my side! I could never resign myself to declaring that I was his mother. And I fled from him, letting a number of years go by, without paying attention to anything in regard to him, excepting to send the means for his complete education. Oh, when I think how fate has punished me for my selfishness!"

She remained silent for a few moments to dry the fresh tears that were reddening her eyes and giving her voice a husky resonance.

"He came to Paris when I was least expecting him. The venerable friend who was looking after his education there in America, had died. I found a man, a grown man, in spite of the fact that he wasn't over sixteen. My first feeling was one of annoyance, almost anger. I should have to say farewell to youth, and change my mode of life on account of this intruder. But there was something in me that kept me from doing anything so heartless as to send him back to a foreign country, or off to a boarding school in Paris. I grew accustomed to him at once. I had to have him in my house. It seemed as though, when I was near him, I felt a certain serenity, a deep quiet joy that I never thought myself capable of feeling. You don't know what it means, Michael. You could never understand, no matter how much I tried to explain it to you. I swear it was the happiest time in my life. There is no love like that. Besides, we were such good comrades! I suddenly felt as though I were a girl of his age again; no, younger than he. George used to give me advice. He was so wise for a boy of his age; and I used to do what he said like a younger sister. He let his mother drag him along and introduce him to a world of pleasure and luxury that dazzled him, after his sober, athletic life with a stern educator. And I leaned proudly on his arm, and laughed at the false ideas people had of our actual relation. How we used to dance, the year before the war, without any one suspecting the true nature of the affection that bound me to my partner!"

Alicia paused to linger on these delightful memories. She smiled with a far-away look in her eyes, as she thought of the malicious error people had made.

"Every tango-tea in the Champs-Élysées found the Duchess de Delille dancing with her latest crush! And, Michael, as for me, I was proud that they should be making such a mistake. I went on being the beautiful Alicia, restored to youth by the fidelity of an adolescent who accompanied her everywhere, with all the enthusiasm of a first love. This seemed to me a much better rôle than that of the passively resigned mother. Besides, what fun we used to have laughing and talking it over afterwards when we were by ourselves! Many of my former lovers felt their old passion revive again out of a sort of unconscious envy—the instinctive rivalry that the man of ripe years feels toward youth—and they began besieging me with their gallantries again. George used to threaten me in fun: 'Mamma, I'm jealous!' He didn't want any other man to be showing attentions to his mother, so that she might belong to him completely. On other occasions I myself had better reasons to protest. I surprised a greedy look in the eyes of many women of my own class when they gazed at him—some with a boldly inviting look, since, being younger, they felt they had a right to take him away from me. And he was so good! He used to joke with me about these passions that he inspired; and tell me about others that I had not been able to guess! You don't know what young people are like nowadays, in the generation that has followed us. They seem to be made of different flesh and blood. Our generation was the last to take love seriously; to give tremendous importance to it, and make it the chief occupation of our lives. Now they don't understand people like you and me: we seem monstrous to them. My son is only interested in one woman: his mother; and in addition to her, automobiles, aeroplanes, and sports. All these strong, innocent boys seemed to have guessed what was awaiting them...."

As she spoke, the momentary serenity with which she had related this happy period in her life gradually vanished. She went on talking in a subdued voice, choked from time to time by sobs.

Suddenly war had come. Who could have imagined it a month before? And her son was ashamed not to be one of the men who were hurrying to the railroad stations to join a regiment. One morning he had overwhelmed her with the announcement of his enlistment as a volunteer. What could she do? Legally she was not his mother. George bore the name of a pair of old married servants who had been willing to play that game of deception by posing as his parents. Besides, he was born in France, and it was not extraordinary that he, like so many other youths, should have wanted to defend his country before he was called to arms by law.

The Duchess lived for a few months in a tiny village in the south of France, near the Aviation Camp where her son was in training. She wanted to be with him just as long as she possibly could. If only he had become a soldier at the time when she was living separated from him, and was concealing her actual relation to him! But she was going to lose him at the sweetest moment of her life, when she was beginning to think she might be at George's side forever.

"It did not take him long to become a pilot. How I hated the ease with which he learned to manage his machine! His progress filled me with pride and anger. Those young fellows are regular fanatics so far as aviation is concerned. It is something that has come into existence in their time, and they have seen it grow before their school-boy eyes. He went away, and since then I have been more dead than alive. Three years, Michael, three years of torture! I've paid dearly for all my past life! Though the mistakes that I made were great, I've made up for them, and more too. You may well have compassion on me. You can have no idea what I'm suffering."

The first year that Alicia had spent alone, she had lived in constant expectation of his letters, which arrived irregularly from the front. Her joys were few and far between. George had come to Paris only once on leave, and had spent half a week with her. At long intervals she also received visits from the aviator's comrades, greeting the news they brought with tears and smiles. Her son had received the War Cross after an air battle. His mother had cut out the short newspaper paragraph referring to this event, sticking it with two pins on the silk with which her bedroom was hung. She would spend hours staring as though hypnotized at these brief lines: "Bachellery, Georges, aviator, gave chase to two enemy planes beyond our lines and ..."

This "Bachellery, Georges" was her son! It made no difference to her that other people were not aware of the fact. Her pride seemed to grow because of the mystery surrounding it. The handsome strapping fellow, strong, and innocent as the heroes of ancient legend, had been formed in her body. All the men whom she had known in her past life seemed more and more petty and ugly; they were inferior beings, sprung from another race of humanity, the existence of which should be forgotten.

Suddenly a stupid, unforeseen accident plunged her into the darkness of despair. One beautiful morning with the joyous confidence of a young knight setting forth in quest of adventure, the aviator started out in his pursuit machine, rising through the silvery clouds in search of the enemy. Suddenly, he noticed some slight motor trouble—due to the negligence of the mechanics in getting it ready, a matter of slight importance under ordinary circumstances ... and he was forced to descend, absolutely unable to continue his flight, and the wind and bad luck caused him to land within the German lines.

"A hundred yards this side, and he would have landed among his own men.... What can you expect? I was too happy. I had still to learn what misery really means! I confess that at the very first I was almost glad, with the selfish gladness of a mother. A prisoner! It meant that his life would be safe; he wouldn't be killed in an air battle; he was no longer in danger of being crushed to pieces or burned to death under his broken machine. But later on!..."

Later this security, that placed her son outside the limit of actual war, became a source of torture. She envied herself the times when he used to go out each day and face death, but still remained free. The newspapers talked about the suffering of the prisoners, their being herded together in vast unsanitary sheds, and the hunger from which they were suffering. The life of ease and comfort which the mother was leading was a constant source of remorse. When she sat down at table, or looked at her soft bed, or noticed the warm caress of a fire, and saw that the window panes were covered with the traceries of frost, she felt she was usurping in a shameless manner something that belonged to another person. Her boy, her poor boy, was living like a stray dog, lying on the straw, with hunger gnawing at his stomach! She had produced a human being—she, a miserable woman, who for so many years had believed herself the center of the universe, was enjoying all kinds of luxuries—and this flesh of her flesh was agonizing under the tortures of want such as are felt only by the most poverty stricken.... She never could have dreamed that such an irony of fate would be reserved for her.

During the first few months she scurried wildly about, with the fierce irrational love of the female animal that sees her young in danger. She went from one government bureau to the other, taking advantage of all her social connections! But there were so many mothers! They were not going to open diplomatic negotiations for a woman in her position.... Every day she sent large packages of food to the offices that had charge of prisoners' relief. They finally refused to accept them. The entire service could not take up all its time doing nothing but send aid to a mere protégé of the Duchess de Delille. There were thousands and thousands of men in the same situation as he. And she could not cry out: "He is my son!" A scandalous revelation like that would not help matters. She kept on sending the packages regularly even if they did not go to her George. They would be used to satisfy some one's hunger. She felt the magnanimity roused by great sorrow; she made her offerings like a mother who, in praying for her child when all hope has been given up, prays for other sick children also, feeling that through her generosity her prayers may be heeded.

Besides, the suspense was cruel. When the clerks took her packages, they smiled sadly. She was practically certain that her shipments of food were being appropriated by the guards. All the expensive eatables intended for her son were doubtless used by the old German reservists in charge of guarding the prisoners, to have a joyous feast, with the greedy merriment of fierce mastiffs, toasting to the glory of the Kaiser and the triumph of their race over the entire world! Good God! What could she do?

At long intervals, after tremendous delays, she would finally get a postcard passed by the German censor. There would be four lines, nothing more, written as children write at school, under the eye of the teacher standing at their backs. But the writing was George's. "In good health. We're not badly treated. Send me eatables." She would spend long hours gazing at these timid, deceiving lines. For her they acquired a new meaning. They told something else: the truth, namely. She recalled the stories of dying captives who had come from those torture camps, and the lines seemed to stammer with groans of a sick child: "Mamma ... hungry. I'm hungry!"

There were times when she thought she would go mad. Everything about her brought to memory the image of her George, well groomed, and cared for by her with such fond and exaggerated attention. She had looked after his clothes, taking an interest in the respective merits of his tailors. She had had to endure his masculine protests when she had tried to provide him with underwear of fine silk like her own. In the morning she used to go and surprise him, as he lay in bed, like a little child, and kiss her own flesh and blood, metamorphosed into an athlete. Everything seemed to her too mean and poor for that strong fellow, handsome as a god of old. She looked after his bed, his dresser, and his person with all the passionate fondness of a sweetheart. She inspected his pockets in order continually to renew her gifts of money. Her Mexican mines were his, and so were the frontier lands, and everything she possessed. And later on—she hated to think when—she would see him married to some one after her own heart. Then his obscure birth was to be glorified by the splendor of enormous wealth. But suddenly the world, losing its balance, had been plunged into a furious madness, and this Prince of Fate, whose mother, in conference with the chef, had invented gastronomic surprises for him alone, was crying from some far off snow-swept plain in the icy north:

"Mother ... hungry. I'm hungry!"

"I went to Switzerland three times, Michael. I even proposed that in Paris they should provide me with means of getting into Germany, offering to go as a spy. But they laughed at me; and they were right! What was I going to spy out? My son, of course ... what I wanted to do in Germany was to see my son. In Switzerland I met two crippled soldiers who had just been exchanged, and came from the camp where George was. They knew the aviator Bachellery. He had tried to escape five times. He enjoyed a certain fame among his companions in misery for the haughtiness with which he faced the cruelest guards. The latest news was uncertain. They had not seen him lately. They thought that he was then in another prison camp, a punishment camp, farther inland, near the Polish frontier, where the refractory and dangerous prisoners were forced to undergo a cruel disciplinary régime, and suffer terrible punishments."

Her voice trembled with anger as she said this. She could see her son dragging a chain, and being whipped like a slave. Oh, if she were only a man, and could be left alone for a moment with that tragi-comedian with the upturned mustache who had made many millions of women groan with sorrow!

"And to think that there have been fanatics who have killed good or insignificant kings! And not one of them has lifted a hand to do away with the Kaiser! Don't talk to me about anarchists. They are idiots! I don't believe in them."

This outburst of wrath vanished immediately. Once more grief and despair tore a sob from her. She remembered a photograph she had seen in one of the newspapers: the torture called "the post," applied by the Germans in their punishment camps; a Frenchman in a tattered uniform, fastened to a wooden stake, as though it were a cross, on an open snow-covered plain, suffering for hours and hours from the deadly cold. It was the death penalty, hypocritically applied, with savage refinements of torture. It was impossible to distinguish the features of the poor fellow suffering like Christ, with his head falling on his breast. Even if it wasn't George, surely he had also suffered the same torture.

"How can I live in such endless anguish! They wouldn't let me go back to Switzerland. They held up my passports. I don't know what's happened to him. There are times when it seems as though my head would burst. That's why I avoid living alone. That's why I gamble, and have to see people, and talk, and get away from my thoughts. Since then I've only received one postcard from my son, without any date, and without any indication as to where he is. It says about the same as the other one. The writing is his, and nevertheless it seems to be in another hand. Oh, what that writing says! I see him like the other man, like the poor fellow fastened to the post covered with rags, as thin as a skeleton.... My son!"

Michael was obliged to take both her hands in a strong grip, and draw them towards him, holding her up, to keep her from falling on the bed in hysterical convulsions. He was sorry that he had come, and, by his curiosity, invited a confession that aroused the woman's grief.

As for her, she looked at him with wide-open staring eyes, without seeing him. Finally, concentrating with an effort, she noticed Michael's emotion. This calmed her somewhat.

"You can be glad you don't know what such torture is like. There's no end to it: there's no help for it. When I think of him, I feel as though I were going to die. Not to know about him! Not to be able to do anything! I ought really to find some diversion and learn to think of something else. One must live: one can't be always weeping. But whenever I succeed in getting interested in anything, I immediately feel remorse. I call myself names: 'You're a bad mother, to forget your sorrows.' A day seldom passes that I eat without crying. I'm tormented by the thought that he would be happy with what is left from my table, with what the servants eat, or perhaps with what they give to the dog! And when Valeria and Clorinda see my tears, they can't explain such constant grief. They don't know my secret. They think like every one else, that it's simply a question of a mere protégé or a young lover. They can't understand such despair over a mere man. That's why I gamble so much. It's the only thing that really keeps my mind occupied, and makes me forget for a time; it's my anæsthetic. Before, I used to play just for the excitement, for the pleasure of struggling with fate; and because I was flattered by the amazement of the curiosity seekers who watched me stake enormous sums with indifference. Now it's on his account—and for no other reason."

Alicia's mind reverted to her financial difficulties. As a matter of fact, her fortune had been seriously impaired some years earlier, but she had always had hopes of some sudden recuperation. Besides, the period before the war had been the happiest time of her life. She had her son and she lived her life, without any thought of business matters. Later her financial ruin had come along with the loss of George.

"If only I had the wealth I used to have! I know the power of money. I could have moved men and even governments. I would have written to the Kaiser, or to Hindenburg, sending them a million, two million, or any amount they asked. 'Now that you are reëstablishing slavery and pillaging towns, here is money for you. Give me back my son.' And now I would have him back at my side. But I'm poor! If you knew how I love money now, just for his sake! I dream of winning big stakes, five hundred thousand francs or maybe a million, in two or three days. How happy I am when I come back from the Casino with a few thousand francs to the good! 'It's to send my poor boy a box with something good to eat,' I say to myself. Then I write to the stores, or go there myself, keeping in mind the things he liked best. You are rich and don't understand how hard it is to get along now, how scarce things are getting, and how much they cost! I didn't have any idea of such things before, either. And I send him boxes of the nicest things; and I feel proud that in my mind I can say to him: 'It's with the money mamma won for you ... it's with my work!' Don't smile, Michael. That's what it is—work! Besides, what else could I work at? The one thing that worries me is how to address these shipments. 'For the Aviator Bachellery, prisoner in Germany.' That's all I know, and there are so many prisoners! Almost all my shipments must be lost; but some at least will reach him. Don't you think he'll get some of them?"

The Prince greeted this anxious question with a vague gesture of agreement. "Yes;—perhaps, almost certainly!"

Immediately Alicia showed a certain reassurance. Eight months had gone by without her hearing anything about him; but other mothers were in the same situation. There was no use despairing. Men who had been given up for dead in the early battles of the war were returning home after a long period of captivity. Besides, did it seem reasonable to believe that a son of hers was going to die of hunger and want, like a beggar?

Lubimoff again nodded assent. "Really, it didn't seem reasonable!"

"There are moments," she said, "when I feel an unexplainable joy, a mysterious intuition, that I'm going to receive good news,—the feeling I have on the days when I go to the Casino sure of winning,—and do win. I wrote to the King of Spain, who is interested in ascertaining the fate of prisoners, and who often succeeds in getting them sent back to their homes. I have had a great number of friends write to him. If he could only give me back my George! At least I expect to learn good news; to find out where he is, and convince myself that he is alive. I would be satisfied if they interned him in Switzerland, the way they do with the seriously wounded, and I would go and live with him. How happy I would be if he were in Lausanne or Vevey, beside the lake, like my husband!"

There was a sad, kindly smile on her face as she thought of the Duke.

"Oh, I haven't forgotten him, I assure you. Everything that's left over from George's boxes, I send to him by way of Geneva. 'For Lieutenant-Colonel de Delille.' Oh, it reaches him, without any difficulty! Poor fellow! His answers are almost love letters. I send him sausages and canned things, in memory of the twenty louis bouquets he used to send me when he was courting me. What are we coming to, Michael! Who could ever have imagined that everything and everybody would be so topsy-turvy!"

Already she was talking more calmly, as though the memory of her son was no longer in the foreground of her thoughts.

"Everything seems to tell me I'm going to get good news. Misfortune can't last so very much longer. Doesn't it seem that way to you? It's like bad luck in play: it finally goes away. The main thing is to save your strength in order to resist it. I ought to feel satisfied. I was so excited I could hardly sleep last night. I went above the thirty; you know: the thirty thousand francs that used to be the limit of my luck. Last night I won eighty thousand. Your friend Lewis was furious. He says it takes a woman to do a thing like that: to win, playing haphazard, defying all the rules."

From the look on the Prince's face she guessed his surprise at her merriment following so closely on her recent tears.

"I can't stay by myself. I have such memories! Perhaps you heard me singing, as you came up-stairs. It's an English song my son used to sing. In the morning I used to go and listen at his door like a sweetheart who, while waiting for him to appear, is glad to hear the voice of the man she loves. Whenever I'm alone I sing it over mechanically; I try to imagine it is George singing, and my eyes fill with tears, but with tears of tenderness that are very sweet. While I was making the bed it seemed as though I heard him, going back and forth in his bedroom, with me waiting and listening in the hall. My voice was his voice. That was why I fairly trembled when you came in. For a moment I supposed you were he. How wonderful it will be when I see him!... I'm sure I shall see him. Misfortune can't last forever. Don't you think I'll see him?"

Her closed eyes seemed to smile on a far-off vision of hope. And Michael, who had remained silent for a long time, spoke to give her encouragement. Poor woman! Yes; she would see her son. At his age a man can stand any hardship. He would return; they would both be happy once more, talking over their present troubles, as though it had all been a bad dream.

"Besides, I will help you. We must get busy and take steps to have your son returned to you. I shall write to the King of Spain. I knew him. He had lunch on my yacht once when I was in San Sebastian. I have friends in Paris, men in politics, and diplomats; I shall write to all of them. And if worse comes to worst, and there's no other way out of it, I shall try through the medium of some neutral government to get a letter through to Wilhelm II. Perhaps he may pay some attention to me. He must remember me, and his visit to my boat."

Now it was her turn to look at him fixedly through a mist of tears, smiling, at the same time, to express her gratitude.

"How kind you are!" she exclaimed after a long silence. "The day when I was in Villa Sirena for the first time I was convinced that I had made a great mistake. How little we knew each other! We needed adversity to see each other as we really are. First you offered to relieve my poverty, and now you are going to try to get me back my son!"

She let herself be carried away by an impulse of affection. Michael saw her bend her head, and suddenly felt the contact of her lips on his hand. He heard two loud kisses and a voice whispering: "Thanks ... thanks." The Prince rose to his feet. He could not tolerate such expression of humility. But at the same time she too stood up; their eyes were on a level. As though desiring to complete the recent caress, she took his head impulsively in her hands, and kissed him on the brow.

A sudden wave of human fragrance, like that which had enveloped him when the sheet had been thrown on his face, once more stirred the depths of his being. He realized that the caress meant nothing: that it was merely a kiss of gratitude, a sudden outburst of feeling on the part of a mother expressing her emotion with unusual impetuousness. In spite of this, he felt himself dominated by passion, cruel and at the same time voluptuous, causing him to reach out his arms to master and embrace what he held within reach.... But his hands touched empty space.

Repenting her act, she had stepped back, retreating a few steps. She was standing in the doorway, ready to continue her flight, mechanically straightening her hair, and drying her tears, as a deep blush spread over her features.

"I didn't know what I was doing!" she murmured. "Forgive me. I was so grateful to learn that you wanted to help me!"

At the same time she pointed to the balcony. Below, in the garden, the voice of the gardener could be heard telling his dog to stop that barking all the time at the foot of the stairs, as though a thief were inside the villa.

"Let us go," she commanded gravely. "The servants will soon be coming back from mass. I shouldn't like to have them find us here in my bedroom. They might think...."

Calming down, Lubimoff noted the unconscious modesty, and the evident uneasiness with which she said this. He suddenly recalled the woman of the "study" on the Avenue du Bois, and her daring theories. Was it really the same person?

As they went downstairs she turned her head to talk to him, as though she had read his thoughts.

"You must be amused at me. What a change from the Alicia of former times! I'm not so bad as I seem, that much is certain, isn't it? Tell me you don't think I'm so bad; tell me you think I'm only mad; mad, and always unlucky."

She opened the rooms downstairs to show how orderly they looked, but the chill of the deserted drawing room, the covers on the furniture, and the musty odor, like that of a damp cellar, prompted them to go out into the garden and, like two people prolonging their farewell, continue their conversation at the foot of the stairway.

The elderly maid of the Duchess, and the gardener's wife who looked after the cooking, passed them repeatedly on various pretexts. They bowed to the gentleman, with a look of adoration and a pleasant smile. They seemed to be saying to themselves: "That nice fellow is Prince Lubimoff, the one that's so much talked about." They had often heard his name in Villa Rosa, and they both venerated him as a providential being who could restore the vanished days of abundance with a mere wave of the hand.

Michael thought it best not to prolong his visit.

"Come and see me," she said in a low voice, as she accompanied him out to the gate. "Now you know everything. You're the only one who does. It will seem very sweet to me to talk with you, and have you console and help me."

The Prince spent the next few hours, pensive and silent. So many new things had come up all at once! First there had been the revelation of a son, whose existence he never could have imagined; next, the untamable creature of love changed into a mother; her tears, her silent suffering, which she was bearing, like a convict's chain, in expiation of her mad past. And the crowning surprise of all had been what he had felt within himself, the resurrection of his former being, his new surrender to the domination of the flesh, and the double lashing his nervous system had received in breathing the perfume of the soft linen and feeling the imprint of her lips on his brow.

This latter he wished to forget, and to succeed in doing so he concentrated all his attention on the revelations she had made, and on her maternal sorrows. Poor Alicia! Finding her impoverished and tearful, with no other help than that which he might give, he began to feel a lasting affection for her. It was the affection of the strong for the weak; a paternal love which did not take into account the similarity in their ages, nor the difference of sex; a tenderness made up for the most part of a certain sweet pity. He was moved by the memory of the humble kiss with which she had caressed his hands. It was the kiss, almost of a beggar. Unhappy woman! This was enough to make him feel obliged never to abandon her.

Alicia's pride, her desire to dominate, had formerly irritated him. Accustomed to protecting women generously without ever submitting to their will, considering them in the light of something agreeable and inferior, he could not compromise with her haughty character. They were both people too strong and domineering to be able to tolerate each other. But now everything was changed.

He remembered her as he had seen her in the bedroom, sorrowful, weeping, with pearls hanging from the corners of her eyes, which were tragically beautiful, as in the images of the Virgin, where Mary is holding the body of the crucified Christ on her knees. Mater Dolorosa!

But there seemed to be another person within the Prince protesting with cold, clear-sightedness against this image. No, she was not the Mother of Sorrows. A mother never abandons her son. She renounces all of the vanities of this world for him. She gives up her present and her future, as though she had no other life than that of her son, part of her own flesh. At all hours she gives him the milk of her breast. Moment by moment she follows his development, fighting with illness, laughing at danger. To love him she does not have to wait for him to grow to the full splendor of adolescence. Whereas she...!

She was the Venus Dolorosa. Even in the moments of deepest despair she maintained her beauty, and her grief seemed a new means of seduction. She was a mother; but she continued to be a woman, that terrible, destructive woman whom the Prince had always hated. Look out, Michael!

But with a smile of superiority he replied inwardly to this reflection.

"Perhaps I am going to fall in love with her," he said to himself. "I am fond of her as I never thought I could be, but only as a friend, a companion worthy of pity, one whom I ought to protect."

At lunch time Spadoni did not turn up at Villa Sirena. Atilio had seen him at the Casino with some English friends from Nice. They were probably lunching together at the Hôtel de Paris to work out some new system or other. The last thing they had tried was for the four of them to play at different tables, but with the same system of combinations, a device that the pianist boasted would prove infallible.

After they had had their coffee, all the guests of the luxurious villa seemed possessed by the same restlessness, which would not let them sit still.

Castro was the first one to leave, announcing that he was going to the Casino. He had a feeling that it was going to be a "great evening." He had had his eyes on a croupier who started work at half-past three. He knew this man's style of starting the ball. Every croupier has his own mannerisms. Some do it with a long sweep, and others with a short jerky motion of the arm. This particular one made it fall most frequently in seventeen, and that was Castro's number.

Novoa was the next to go, but he was less frank about it. He stammered blushingly as he said good-by to the Prince. Perhaps he would spend the afternoon with some friends from Monaco. Perhaps he would take a short trip on the Nice road as far as Cap d'Ail or Beaulieu. His was the embarrassment of a man who does not know how to lie.

The Prince was left alone. He looked at the sea for a while. Then he changed windows, and gazed at the gardens. He pressed a button to call Don Marcos. He did not know what he was going to say to him but he felt he must see him in order not to remain alone. One of the old women servants appeared, and announced that the Colonel had gone to Monte Carlo.

"He, too," the Prince said to himself.

In order to escape the tediousness of spending a Sunday afternoon alone, he took his hat and overcoat. Some power beyond his comprehension was impelling him toward the neighboring city. Turning away from the villa, he walked through the gardens.

The edifice, thus deserted, appeared larger, and its frowning and angry silence seemed to be asking him why anybody had ever been such a fool as to waste so much money and material on a box like that.

Along the nearby road, street cars and carriages were gliding, filled with city people who were coming out for a glimpse of the smiling sea, or of a group of pines, or to find a height that might afford a panoramic view.

And he, the owner of the famous gardens of Villa Sirena, was deserting all this beauty to go to a city from which others were trying to escape.

Lubimoff recalled the splendid scheme of life he had worked out a few months before: a community of lay brethren shut off from the world in a spot like paradise: music, astronomy, pleasant conversations, wholesome work. And now the monks were running away on all sorts of pretexts, and he, who was their prior, also was feeling an unexplainable impulse to follow their example. Even Toledo, the faithful admirer of that estate which he had considered the best work of his life, seemed to be suffering from the same feverish desire to get away.

Near the gate he turned to contemplate his beautiful domain as if to beg its pardon. There was a silence like that surrounding an enchanted palace. The gardens seemed asleep like dream woods.

He thought he saw at the end of a long avenue a flutter of two large birds. It was Estola and Pistola, in afternoon coats too long for them, running toward the end of the promontory. It was as though Villa Sirena had been constructed for them. They could play with the active joy of youth in these gardens, to the envy of those who lingered at the gate out of curiosity. As they ran along they were free to trample on rare plants brought from the other side of the globe; free to jump from rock to rock in search of the little fishes left by the waves in miniature lakes in the hollows of the rock, until their coat tails were wet and their shoes full of holes—to the despair of the Colonel, who made the servants pass in review before him every day.

Michael preferred not to ask himself where he was going. He surely had some end in view when he started his walk, but he felt it a nuisance to think about it. Suddenly he saw two currents of people coming from opposite directions, meeting and mingling, as they both mounted a short winding stairway which was divided by two hand-rails, and was covered by three red carpets.

He was in front of the Casino. On one side, were arriving the people who had just come by train, on the other, those who had been gathered in by all the street cars from the towns on the Riviera between Nice and Monte Carlo.

That evening a celebrated Italian tenor was singing, and many of the people, forgetting their game for the moment, were gathering in the theater.

Lubimoff found himself immediately attended by two solemn gentlemen in frock coats with black ties and their heads bare. They were two inspectors from the Casino.

"We are very sorry, Prince, but everything is full. There are people even in the aisles."

But since it was he, one of the two men accompanied him as far as the box belonging to the Prime Minister of Monaco. The man who governed for the Sovereign Prince recognized him and was anxious to give him the best seat, but Michael, disliking public curiosity, preferred to remain in the second row.

It was a theater without any balconies. The auditorium was wider than it was deep. The rows of comfortable seats were all alike and all sold at the same price. The stage was used for concerts and, on rare occasions, for plays and operas.

The architect who had built the Paris Opera House had repeated the same dazzling display in this hall. There were gold ornaments on every side, elaborate moldings, caryatids and immense mirrors. There was not a hand's breadth of the wall without its gilded stucco, raised in bold relief.

In the hall at the rear above the seats that rose at a decided angle, were five boxes, the only ones there were.

They were reserved for the Sovereign Prince and his high officials.

While listening to the singing, Michael examined the crowded mass of people, as well as he could, from his seat. He recognized many as he gazed over their heads.

Toward the front he distinguished a man with gray hair that was parted from the forehead to the nape of the neck, and brushed forward mingling with his side whiskers, in an Austrian fashion. It was the Colonel, who was listening with a certain air of authority, swaying his head to show his approbation of the celebrated tenor. But he was not alone. The Prince saw him bend toward a girl with curly hair and a string of large amber beads. Oh, the traitor!

There was no doubt about it. It must have been the gardener's daughter. That was why he had fled in such a hurry. The milliner's apprentice had insisted. She was anxious to hear the singer she had heard the ladies talk so much about.

When the huge nightingale had retired to the wings, the Colonel offered his protégée a cornucopia full of caramels. Caramels in wartime! An extravagance, indeed, that only a lover could allow himself.

In the intermission, the Prince slipped away, for fear that he might meet Don Marcos and spoil his aide's pleasant afternoon by his presence. Besides, he was not interested in the opera or in the highly praised artist.

He crossed the large ante-room with its columns of jasper supporting a gallery with balusters surmounted by bronze candelabras. At one end of the room the latest news was posted on panels. The Prince read it without any curiosity.

Nothing new. The same as ever. The monotonous trench warfare was continuing. Ground gained and lost by the yard. There would be no end to it.

He slipped out between the groups of people during the intermission, taking care that the Colonel should not see him.

Poor Don Marcos! He was walking along gravely and proudly by the side of his protégée, who might have been his granddaughter. He glanced with hostility at all the young men, while behind his back, she made eyes at every passing uniform.

The Prince was obliged to force his way through a motionless compact group made up of wounded officers. French, Canadians, Australians, and Englishmen. Mingled with them were nurses of various types—some with nunlike veils and with a delicate appearance; others with a masculine look, having neckties and uniforms with gold buttons, without any feminine apparel except their skirts. Some who were older and had short hair, red faces, and large shell spectacles had to be examined closely before one could be convinced, from their hybrid appearance, that they were women. They crowded together in front of the three double curtains leading to the gambling rooms. Those who belonged in any way to the army or navy of any nation whatsoever were not allowed to pass this limit. Soldiers could enter only the theater and the ante-room of the Casino. And those people who in their far-off countries had often heard of Monte Carlo, finding themselves there by chance of war, were crowding at the curtains with childish curiosity, admiring, for an instant, as the draperies rapidly opened and closed, the vision of gilded rooms, all in a row and filled with people. Afterwards they would withdraw, giving up their places to other comrades. At last they had seen it! Now they could say they knew all about Monte Carlo!

The employees in their black frock coats opened one of the curtains, greeting the Prince as though he were an old acquaintance. It was the first time Michael had entered the gaming rooms since his return. It seemed to him as though he had awakened miraculously into the world of things before the war. Everything that was afflicting humanity remained on the other side of the door, as the action of a drama, unreal but exciting, remains on the stage of a theater which we leave behind us. He found even a certain attractiveness in the architecture of these drawing rooms, because of their vague familiarity, recalling the pleasant days of his life. He was in the Renaissance hall, but his whole attention was taken by the adjoining parlor, the central rotunda of the Casino, called the "Schmidt Drawing Room," the one on which all the other rooms converge and which seems to be prolonged under the dividing archways to the farthest ends of the building.

A pulsing silence arose from the mass of human beings around the green tables. Every one was talking in a low voice as though in church. From time to time this murmur was broken by a long swishing sound, a noise like that of pebbles on the shore swept by a wave. It was caused by the rakes of the employees sweeping the green cloth and carrying with them the clashing coins and ivory ships—all the spoils of the losings. The voices of the croupiers, like those of officers giving commands, arose above the feverish silence which reminded one of a humming hive.

"Faites vos jeux. Vos jeux sont faits?... Rien ne va plus."

The hall gradually lost the suppressed noises which served to accentuate its silence. People breathed more naturally, as they craned their necks to see better over the shoulders of those in front of them. Some of the women were standing on one foot only, with the other raised behind them like dancers bending over to touch the ground with their hands. They all crowded together, paying no attention to the sex of the persons against whom they were pushing. During this pause, marked by long faces, frowning eyebrows, drawn mouths, and converging glances, there resounded with its noise increased by a diabolical echo, the rattling of the tiny ivory ball as it whirled in the grooves along the wooden rim, while the colored rows of the roulette wheel kept spinning in the opposite direction, like a kaleidoscope. Suddenly there was a sharp click. The ball had ended its circular flight, falling into a number. The silence was prolonged. The spectators' necks were craned even more. There was a nervous clenching of fists. Again there was the sound of pebbles washed by the sea. The rakes were sweeping the green table. It was a bad number for the players. Whenever a stifled uproar occurred, caused by a hundred bosoms suddenly breathing freely, it took the croupiers several minutes to resume play. They had to pay the winners and settle disputes between those who claimed the same bet. At the end of each play various groups at a table would disengage themselves to go over to another; but the ring of people always remained compact through the arrival of new spectators.

From the central skylight a dim splendor descended. Outside the sun was shining on the azure sea. This light was like that of a wine cellar, a light, according to Castro, like that of a Hall of Congress. It was a yellowish light gold which seemed to increase the magnificence of the drawing rooms. The architecture was of the rich and majestic sort that attracts the crowd and the newly rich. The columns and pillars of onyx and bronze held up a magnificent ceiling, broken by the circular stained glass of the skylight. In the four triangles of the vault were statues representing Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, as though these four elements had some relation to the business which gave the vast edifice its reason for existence.

Four metal spiders, huge and glistening, completed the heavy sumptuousness of the decoration. Where there were no gilded ornaments or mirrors, the walls were covered with showy pictures. These paintings and all of the rest that adorned the Casino were the object of Michael's jests. Some of them were fairly acceptable. The majority appeared very ancient in spite of the fact that they were not over forty years old. But there was nothing noble about their antique appearance. It seemed rather as though they had lain for centuries in scorn and oblivion. Atilio accounted for the appearance of these canvases in a way of his own. According to him they were the work of various patrons ruined by gambling, whom the Casino felt obliged to advertise.

The Prince began to notice well-known faces in this crowd which was being constantly renewed, and was changing each moment. The whole world, sooner or later passed that way. That floor with its various inlaid woods was one of the most frequented spots of Europe. It was something like the ancient Roman forum, a point on which all roads of the entire world converged. Idlers from the entire globe were attracted to this room. They all dreamed of being able to go sometime and risk a coin in the great Mediterranean gambling house. Men from other continents disembarking in the old world wrote Monte Carlo on the itinerary of their travels. But this human river which constantly glided along, receiving new waves of arrivals, kept leaving in the crannies of its shores, pools of stagnant waters, clogged by uprooted plants and the naked trunks of trees.

Lubimoff nodded to certain persons, who looked at him with a sort of cordial surprise, as though they were looking at a dead man brought to life. An old man, with a short bristling beard on a face pale as a corpse, bowed deeply as he passed, without seeming in his humility to be offended at not receiving an acknowledgment. He was the man most sought after and coaxed by the women who frequented the Casino. He wore a sort of black cap like that of a priest, and carried a hat in one hand. On his coat lapel was a medal of enamel work with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Atilio and Lewis had also sought him frequently. Michael was sure that this man was a friend of the Duchess de Delille and that on more than one occasion he had seen her tears. He loaned money at 5 per cent (for every 24 hours), and spent the time, he was not busy, watching new arrivals from a distance to see if they might turn out to be new clients.

The Prince received smiles, also from certain respectable looking women who were by no means ugly, though they were stout in some parts of their body and slender in others, like persons who have taken a course to reduce flesh without obtaining a uniform result. They were seated on the divans in the corners, talking among themselves, and watching the groups of gamblers, with the air of employees resting after having done their duty. They had come to Monte Carlo many years ago with jewels, with thousands of francs, and men who endured all the unevenness of their tempers and in addition gave them money. And everything had vanished on the Casino tables. But they went on clinging to the reef on which they had been wrecked—perhaps beyond salvation, living on the jettison of many another who had followed the same route, only to be dashed on the same rocks and perish. They offered their services to strangers as persons acquainted with the mysteries of the house, advising honey-moon couples what number they should play, as though they knew the secret. Besides they came to the Casino at the opening hour to get the best places at the tables and later give up their chairs to wealthy players, steady clients, who rewarded them generously if luck favored them.