Looking over the stone balconies one could peer into the ocean to enormous depths. The bold red cliff buried itself vertically in the waters darkened by shadows, or took shelter behind landslides of rocks continually surrounded by foam. On one side Cap-Martin advanced, repelling the onrush of the waves, circles of white caps that constantly succeeded one another, rising from the azure meadows; still farther on lay the Italian coast, showing rose-colored through the melancholy afternoon mist, and on the opposite side lay Cap-d"Ail and Cap-Ferrat, above whose backs embossed with the green of the seas, and dotted with the white of the villas--the golden winding sheet, which was to enshroud the dying sun, began to rise.
"Beautiful! very beautiful!"
Alicia displayed a girlish delight. They sat down in view of the sea, slowly drinking in the vibrant calm, in which mingled the trembling of the pines, the deep churning of the invisible foam, the breath of the azure plain, and the rustling of the earth, grazed by rosaries of ants, by chains of caterpillars, and by the busy work of the black beetle, and at the same time deeply stirred by the awakening of the roots.
From time to time human footsteps sounded on the sand of the winding path. They came from invalids or convalescents who were pa.s.sing through the gardens on coming out of the Museum; people from Monaco returning to their homes after having taken the sun on a bench; fat housewives who kept their knitting in a bag; old men leaning on canes, who perhaps had never gone to sea, but who looked like old Genoese sailors. Also a few pairs of lovers pa.s.sed slowly. They would appear at a turning of the path with their arms around each other"s waists, silent, looking at each other, and observing that there was another couple on the bench, they unclasped, and suddenly pretended to be carrying on a conversation. As soon as possible they gained the nearest turning to resume their tender entwining, not without having first greeted the Prince and the d.u.c.h.ess with a smile, as though they saw in them another pair of lovers.
"And just to think that we have never come here before!" said Alicia.
"You, at least, own magnificent gardens; but I, living in a villa which is simply a house with a few trees around it and has no other views than the opposite building, have been so stupid to have spent the afternoon in the Casino, dark and shut in like a wine cellar. How awful!"
She shuddered on thinking of the Casino. It seemed impossible to her now that during the very hours when this garden lay stretched out beside the sea, with its luminous sylvan splendor she should have been able to live in that half light of artificial illumination or in that nasty, unwholesome atmosphere.
"There are many beautiful things in the world," she continued, "for which money is not necessary. Just to think that if we had not lost we would not be here! It is almost better to be poor."
Michael laughed at her earnestness. No; it was not pleasant to be poor; but she was right in saying that to enjoy many beautiful things it was not necessary to have money.
"We, ourselves," she added, after a long pause, "have known each other only since we lost our wealth. Who knows but what if we had been born poor we would have understood each other better when we were young! I have often thought so."
Of course! And since Michael had been there on the bench, beside her, he had been thinking the same thing. Alicia"s joy at the splendor of the afternoon, her enthusiasm on seeing this rustic garden overlooking the sea, far from certain people, without whom she formerly would have thought life intolerable, far from gambling, which was the only remedy to fill the emptiness of her life--all this flattered and delighted the Prince, like a discovery in harmony with his desires. At present he saw her in a very different light from that in which he had imagined her in former years. And he, too, surely seemed like a very different person in her eyes than he had in the past. Before, they had been separated by an enormous wall, wealth, that gave rise to pride and eagerness for domineering.
He felt the need of going on talking. Something was surging within him, causing words to rise to his lips in an irresistible tide.
A voice within seemed to warn him. "You are going to commit some monstrous folly. Look out!--You are on the road to mixing up your life again----" It was the old Lubimoff in him that was talking; the Lubimoff who had recently arrived from Paris to take refuge in his Ark, far from the vain longings that make up the happiness of the majority of men; it was the stern chief of the "enemies of women."
But the harsh, mournful inner voice awoke no echoing response. The Prince despised this phantom that still remained within him, lamenting over the ruins it found there.
Up to that moment he had been inhaling with delight the perfume of that woman. It seemed to mingle with the perfumes of the afternoon, communicating its essence to all Nature. He saw the sky, the sea, the trees, and everything in fact in terms of her, as though she filled all s.p.a.ce.
He, too, had made a discovery that afternoon. He thought with horror of the loneliness of Villa Sirena, just as she had been thinking of the Casino. These gardens which every one might enjoy, seemed to him more beautiful than those he owned, and which every one envied him. How had he ever been able to walk around his villa, through its magnificent and lonely avenues, when there existed in the world the marvelous pleasures of sitting on a public bench beside a woman, or walking close to her, with an arm around her waist, like those poor soldiers and sailors?
Once more he heard the voice: "Fine, Prince! In love like a school-boy when you"re over forty. Go on with your foolishness, if it amuses you!... What would the other "enemies of women" say?"
But he refused to listen to this last protest from the other hostile and forgotten half of his personality.
"Our life has been a mistake," he said aloud, with a certain vehemence, in order not to show his emotion. "You, too, must realize that I think the same--that I acknowledge my error--because I--because I, for some time--have been in love with you!... Well, I have said it! Now laugh if you like."
She did not feel like laughing. She gave a slight exclamation, looked at him for a moment, and turned away as though avoiding the questioning glance in his eyes. She had had a presentiment that this was coming, sooner or later, but her breath was taken away on actually hearing it!
There was a long silence.
"What is your answer?" the famous Prince Lubimoff, adored by so many women, finally asked with timidity.
Alicia looked at him again.
"Aren"t you joking? Isn"t it a mere whim inspired by the beauty of this afternoon--so poetic?"
Michael protested with a gesture. How could she take as a caprice the grave decision that he had finally reached after so long and difficult a debate within, the way one evolves a truly great decision!
"If I were like most women, I would reply: "How many women have you said the same thing to?" But such a question is stupid. One may have said: "I love you," to a woman, in all sincerity and some time later repeat the same words to another, with still more sincerity. I"m not going to ask you to how many you have said what you have just said to me. Perhaps you never said it to any one before. To fulfill your desires it wasn"t necessary to exert yourself, playing a comedy of deep affection: they sought you pa.s.sionately; like a Sultan, you needed only to throw your handkerchief as a signal.... But when it comes to me! Remember, Michael: as children we hated each other; later on, when I was willing, you were not. And now we are beginning to grow old! Now that I possess only the remains of what I once was and haven"t the same freedom any longer, since I have--you know what...! It is absurd, and that is why I laugh.
No: never!"
It was the Prince"s turn to speak. They had hated each other, that was true, and now he considered that hate as fortunate. What a misfortune for both of them if marriage had united their two enormous fortunes and their two prides, more enormous still.
"We would have separated a week later; perhaps the same day," Michael continued. "I even suspect that I would have beaten you."
"And I you," said the d.u.c.h.ess. "No place would have been large enough to hold us both. It would have been necessary for one of us to give in to the other. And neither one of us would have thought of making such a sacrifice."
"I might say the same," he continued, "about the night when we dined together. I am glad of my absurd and ridiculous conduct on that occasion. Had I given in, there would be an invincible barrier between us now; we would never have met again, and we would not be here saying to each other what we are saying now."
She a.s.sented.
"We would not be here, that is certain. You would have kept a frightful memory of me; I know very well what I was like then. Neither would I have sought you out, even though my life depended on it. Thanks to your flight that evening we can still be friends, eternal friends, brothers if you like; but why do you talk to me about love? It doesn"t belong to our age. The time has pa.s.sed. What do you see in me now that you did not when I was young?"
"I see your misfortune."
The voice of the Prince sounded grave and deeply sincere as he said this.
He had reflected for a long time, before answering, when he had asked himself the same question as Alicia"s. He was sure that he had begun to love her the day when she had come to Villa Sirena to confess her ruin and to ask him to forget her debt to him. Poor d.u.c.h.ess de Delille, accustomed to spending millions each year, the proprietress of precious mines, and having to live by gambling like an adventuress!...
Afterwards, beside her bed, seeing her tears, and listening to the great secret of her life, the hidden motherhood that had made her weep, he had become definitely conscious of this love. During the last few days, seeing her victorious in the Casino, his love had been clouded; he cared less for her. Later, finding her ruined and sick with sadness, his affection was renewed; and to help her, he had even become a gambler, he, who was incapable of doing this even for his own salvation!
"You can"t understand me; you are a woman. Often in my life, other women have said to me, after some unexplainable act of theirs: "It is useless to try: men can never succeed in understanding us." I say the same: A woman cannot understand a man either. I love you now because you inspire pity in me, and pity leads to tenderness and tenderness is true love, love such as I have never felt before. Each one loves in his own way.
The majority of women need to feel proud when they love; the person they love must arouse the envy of others through being brave, handsome, wealthy or talented. Man almost always loves through pity, through tender compa.s.sion inspired by woman. He never feels more in love than when a woman"s head reclines against his breast with the abandon of weakness; and when his hand is buried in her hair, it finds a tiny delicate head--smaller than he had ever imagined--a head that is filled with divine words, irresistible charms, and n.o.ble impulses, but which rarely has that force of thought which makes man superior to her. Her adorable arms are not strong enough to protect her. And man, seeing her so lovely and so weak, feels his pa.s.sion increase with pity and the desire to protect her."
"No," she said. "Woman, too, knows the meaning of compa.s.sionate love. A man for whom she feels indifference suddenly interests her, when she sees that he is unhappy; and a woman, who hates her lover one day, returns to him the next, when she feels that he is in danger. She never speaks more tenderly than when she says, "My poor little boy!""
The Prince a.s.sented with a gesture. That was all very well. But immediately he returned to the subject which interested him.
"To-day we both know misfortune; I, as well as you, since I have lost what distinguished me from other men, and which I shall never perhaps recover. But your situation is still worse; you are a woman, you are poorer, and I feel attracted to you and tell you what I never would have told you if, shut up within our own pride, we had both kept our former places in the world."
He went on talking in a soothing tone almost in her ear, coming closer to her, and breathing the perfume of the fur boa around her neck, which seemed to have concentrated in itself the perfume of her whole body.
He repeated what he had thought in the nights when he had struggled with his former dread; thoughts that he had vigorously resumed shortly before, as he was sitting silently by her side in the carriage. He talked of the future. They might still be happy; the love he offered her was of the quiet, lasting kind; an autumnal love, a love that would be for all time, with no dramatic complications, peaceful, tranquil, sweetly uneventful, like the long winter evenings beside a fire.
She laughed with a pained expression.
"You forget who I am; you talk as though the past did not exist, as though you were not yourself and as though all the stories that weigh against my name did not exist. If some one else were to make me this proposal, who knows!... I am weary and the thought of a quiet future attracts me. But you!... With you it would be impossible: It would end disastrously. I prefer that we be friends, without any thought of love.
It is safer and more lasting."
On seeing his look of dismay, Alicia went on talking. She was not afraid of living with him because of what people might say. It is true that she had a husband, who now in the throes of a senile pa.s.sion would refuse to grant her a divorce. But what did she care for an obstacle like that, or for what people would say about it!... She had done more daring things in her life!
"It is simply that I do not want to. Don"t ask me why: I could not explain it to you; or I should say, you would not understand me. I repeat what other women have said to you: "You are a man, and cannot understand women." No, I don"t want to. I shall speak more plainly: Another man might succeed in interesting me--I don"t know. We are so weak! Our wills play us such strange tricks! But with you, no.... We know each other too well: It is impossible."
Michael spoke in a tone of sadness and chagrin.
"I don"t interest you: that is easy to see."
Alicia once more laughed heartily and with one of her hands she tapped those of the Prince which were clasped together.