"Insomnia always harms you, mamma. Again you have that horrible neuralgia!"

"Yes, I feel a little ill," answered Malvina in a weak voice.

She rose, and tried to smile at Irene, but her pale lips merely quivered, and her eyelids drooped; they were swollen from weeping. With a step which she strove to make firm and steady she went toward her bedroom.

Irene followed some steps behind.

"Mamma?"

"What, my child?"

Irene's lips opened and closed repeatedly; it seemed as though some cry would come from them, but she only said in low tones:

"A little wine or bouillon might be brought?"

Malvina shook her head, advanced some steps, looked around:

"Ira!"

The daughter stood before her mother, but now Malvina in her turn was speechless. She inclined her forehead, which covered slowly with a blush; at last she inquired in a low voice:

"Is your father at home?"

"I heard him drive away some moments ago."

"On his return, should he wish to see me, say that I am waiting for him."

"Very well, mamma."

In the door she turned again:

"Should someone else come--I cannot--"

Irene halted a number of steps from her mother in the formal posture of a society young lady, and said:

"Be at rest, mamma; I shall not go a step away, and I shall not let anyone interrupt you. Not even father if you wish--perhaps to-morrow would be better?"

"Oh, no, no!" cried Malvina, with sudden animation. "On the contrary, as soon as possible--beg your father to come, and let me know at the earliest."

"Very well, mamma."

Malvina closed the bedroom door, advanced a few steps, and fell on her knees at her richly covered bed. Amid furniture, finished in yellow damask, on a downy bed, covered with cambric and lace, she raised her clasped hands, and said, in whispers broken with sobs:

"O G.o.d! O G.o.d! O G.o.d!"

She was of those weak beings who to live need heartfelt love as much as air, and who are infected by this love without power of resisting it. To such a love had she yielded once in the chill and emptiness of rich drawing rooms. That was a happening of long ago; she was the weaker at that time because she was caught by a breeze from the spring of her life, pa.s.sed in the company of that man who was casting himself at her feet then. In that moment of yielding a pebble had dropped on her, the weight of which increased with the course of years and the growth of her children. She had not thought for an instant that she was the heroine of a drama. On the contrary, she repeated, with a face always blushing from shame: "Weak! weak! weak!" and, from a time rather remote, it was joined with another word, "Guilty." She was weak, still to-day she had found strength at last to cut one of those knots in which her life had been involved so repulsively.

Oh, that the other might be torn apart quickly; then she could go far from the world into lone obscurity, an abyss occupied only by her endless penitence. In her head a plan had matured. She wished to speak with Darvid as soon as possible, and she doubted not that in the near future he would agree with her. Her daughters?

Well, was it not better that such a mother should leave them, vanish from their eyes?

Irene pushed to the window a small table, on which were painting materials; she took her place at the table, and with fixed attention in her eyes began to outline a cl.u.s.ter of beautiful flowers. They were chrysanthemums, and seemed to be opening their snowy and fiery petals to mystic kisses. Deep silence reigned in the mansion, and only after a certain time had pa.s.sed did the sound of gla.s.ses and porcelain come from a remote apartment, and at the door of the study a servant appeared, announcing that lunch was served. Irene raised her head from her work:

"Tell Panna Caroline and Miss Mary that mamma and I will not come to the table."

She added a command to bring two cups of bouillon and some rusks.

A while later she stood with a cup in her hand at her mother's door.

"May I come in?"

She held her ear to the door; there was no answer. Her lids blinked anxiously; she repeated the question, adding:

"Mamma, I beg--"

"Come in, Ira!"

Covered with silken materials Malvina was like a glittering wave on the bed. Irene entered with the bouillon and the rusks, then slipped through the room quietly and let down the shades. A mild half-gloom filled the chamber.

"This is better. Light when one has the headache is hurtful." She went to the bed. "You cannot sleep in these tight boots, try as you like, and without some hours of sleep the neuralgia will not leave you."

Before these words were finished, her slender hands had changed the tight boots for roomy and soft ones. She bent down, and with a touch of her fingers unfastened a number of hooks at her mother's breast.

"Now, it will be well!" Irene dropped her arms on her dress and smiled a little. Despite her fashionable robe and fantastic hairdressing there was in her at that moment something of the sister of charity, she seemed painstaking and cautious.

"And now, mamma, be a little glutton," added she with a smile; "you will drink the bouillon and eat the rusk; I will go to paint my chrysanthemums."

She was at the door when she heard the call:

"Ira!"

"What, mamma?"

Two arms stretched toward her, and surrounded her neck; and lips, so feverish that they burnt, covered her forehead and face with kisses. Irene in return pressed her lips to her mother's forehead and hand, but for a few seconds only, then she withdrew from the embrace with a gentle movement, moved away somewhat, and said:

"Be not excited, for that may increase the neuralgia."

At the door she turned again:

"Should anything be needed, just whisper; you know what delicate hearing I have; I shall hear. I shall be painting in your study.

Those chrysanthemums are beautiful, and I have a new idea about them which interests me greatly."

In the tempered winter light from the window, in that study full of gilding, artistic trifles, syringas, and hyacinths, Irene sat at the table with painting utensils, sunk in thought and idle.

From beneath her brows, which had each the outline of a delicate little flame, her fixed eyes turned toward the past. She had in mind a time when she was ten years old, and was fitting a new dress on her doll with immense interest. At first she did not turn attention to her parents' conversation in the next chamber, but afterward, when the dress was fitted to the doll as if melted around it, she raised her head, and through the open door began to look and listen. Her father, with a jesting smile, was sitting in an armchair; her mother, in a white gown, was standing before him, with such an expression in her eyes as if she were praying for salvation.

"Aloysius!" said she, "have we not enough? Is there nothing in the world except property and profits--this golden idol?"

"I beg you to consider that there is something else," interrupted he, with a slight hiss of irony; "this luxury which surrounds you and becomes you so well."

Then she seated herself opposite him, and, bending forward, spoke somewhat quickly, disconnectedly:

"Do we live with each other? We do not by any means. We only see each other. There is nothing in common between us. You are swallowed up by business, I by society. I have taken a fancy, it is true, for amus.e.m.e.nt, but in the depth of my heart I am often very gloomy. I feel lonely. My early life, as you know, was modest, poor, toilsome, and often it calls to me reproachfully.