"My goodness! I can't say that's a mosquito!" and she examined her ear.

"How tiresome and imprudent of Hans! But Jingo, it was good!--if there only had been time--"

Then she, too, laughed as she powdered her face, and when she alighted at the door of the Hotel du Rhin, no marks remained of conflict except the telltale ear.

But on encountering her maid, she was carrying her minute Pekinese dog in her arms and was beating him well.

"Regardez, Marie! la vilaine bete m'a mordu l'oreil!"

"Tiens!" commented the affronted Marie, who adored Fou-Chou. "Et le cher pet.i.t chien de Madame est si doux!"

Stanisla.s.s Boleski was poring over a voluminous bundle of papers when his wife, clad in a diaphanous wrap, came into his sitting room. They had a palatial suite at the Rhin. The affairs of Poland were not prospering as he had hoped, and these papers required his supreme attention--there was German intrigue going on somewhere underneath. He longed for Harietta's sympathy which she had been so prodigal in bestowing before she had secured her divorce from that brute of a Teutonic husband, whom she hated so much. Now she hardly ever listened, and yawned in his face when he spoke of Poland and his high aims. But he must make allowances for her--she was such a child of impulse, so lovely, so fascinating! And here in Paris, admired as she was, how could he wonder at her distraction!

"Stanisla.s.s! my old Stannie," she cooed in his ear, "what am I to wear to-night for the Montivacchini ball? You will want me to look my best, I know, and I just love to please you."

He was all attention at once, pushing the doc.u.ments aside as she put her arms around his neck and pulled his beard, then she drew his head back to kiss the part where the hair was growing thin on the top--her eyes fixed on the papers.

"You don't want to bother with those tiresome old things any more; go and get into your dressing-gown, and come to my room and talk while I am polishing my nails,--we can have half an hour before I must dress. I'll wait for you here--I must be petted to-night, I am tired and cross."

Stanisla.s.s Boleski rose with alacrity. She had not been kind to him for days--fretful and capricious and impossible to please. He must not lose this chance--if it could only have been when he was not so busy--but--

"Run along, do!" she commanded, tapping her foot.

And putting the papers hastily in a drawer with a spring lock, he went gladly from the room.

Her whole aspect changed; she lit a cigarette and hummed a tune, while she fingered a key which dangled from her bracelet.

No one eclipsed Madame Boleski in that distinguished crowd later on.

Her clinging silver brocade, and the one red rose at the edge of the extreme decolletage, were simply the perfection of art. She did not wear gloves, and on her beautifully manicured hands she wore no rings except a magnificent ruby on the left little finger. It was her caprice to refuse an alliance. "Wedding rings!" she had said to Stanisla.s.s. "Bosh!

they spoil the look. Sometimes it is chic to have a good jewel on one finger, sometimes on another, but to be tied down to that band of homely gold! Never!"

Stanisla.s.s had argued in those early days--he seldom argued now.

"My love!" he cried, as she burst upon his infatuated vision, when ready for the ball, "let me admire you!"

She turned about; she knew that she was perfection.

Her husband kissed her fingers, and then he caught sight of the ruby ring. He examined it.

"I had not seen this ruby before," he exclaimed in a surprised voice, "and I thought I knew all your jewel case!"

She held out her hand while her big, stupid, appealing hazel eyes expressed childish innocence.

"No--I'd put it away, it was of other days--but I do love rubies, and so I got it out to-night, it goes with my rose!"

He had perceived this. Had he not become educated in the subtleties of a woman's apparel? For was it not his duty often, and his pleasure sometimes, to have to a.s.sist at her toilet, and to listen for hours to discussions of garments, and if they could suit or not. He was even accustomed now to waiting in the hot salons in the Rue de la Paix, while these stately perfections were being essayed. But the ruby ring worried him. Why had she asked him to give her just such a one only last month, if she already possessed its fellow?... He had refused because her extravagance had grown fantastic, but he had meant to cede later. Every pleasure of the senses he always had to secure by bribes.

"I do not understand why?--" he began, but she put her hand over his mouth and then kissed him voluptuously before she turned and shrilly cried to Marie to bring her ermine cloak.

The maid's eyes were round and sullen with resentment; she had not forgotten the beating of Fou-Chou! "As for the ear of Madame!" she said, clasping the tiny dog to her heart, as she watched her mistress go towards the lift from the sitting-room, "as for that maudite ear, thy teeth are innocent, my angel! But I wish that he who is guilty had bitten it off!" Then she laughed disdainfully.

"And look at the old fool! He dreams of nothing! And if he dreamed, he would not believe--such _insenses_ are men!"

Meanwhile the Boleskis had arrived at the hotel of the d.u.c.h.esse di Montivacchini, that rich and ravishing American-Italian, who gave the most splendid and exclusive entertainments in Paris. So, too, had arrived Sir John and Lady Ardayre, brought on from the dinner at the Ritz by Verisschenzko.

Denzil had left that morning for England, or he would have had the disagreeable experience of meeting his _soi-disant_ cousin, to whom he had applied the epithet "toad." For Ferdinand Ardayre had just reached the gay city from Constantinople, and had also come to the ball with a friend in the Turkish Emba.s.sy.

He happened to be standing at the door when the Boleskis were announced, and his light eyes devoured Harietta--she seemed to him the ideal of things feminine--and he immediately took steps to be presented. a.s.surance was one of his strongest cards. He was a fair man--with the fairness of a Turk not European--and there was something mean and chetive in his regard. He would have looked over-dressed and un-English in a London ball-room, but in that cosmopolitan company he was unremarkable. He had been his mother's idol and Sir James had left him everything he could sc.r.a.pe from his highly mortgaged property. But certain tastes of his own made a Continental life more congenial to him, and he had chosen early to enter a financial house which took him to the East and Constantinople. He was about twenty-seven years old at this period and was considered by himself and a number of women to be a creature of superlative charm.

The one burning bitterness in his spirit was the knowledge that Sir John Ardayre had never recognised him as a brother. During Sir James' lifetime there had been silence upon the matter, since John had no legal reason for denying the relationship, but once he had become master of Ardayre he had let it be known that he refused to believe Ferdinand to be his father's son. On the rare occasions when he had to be mentioned, John called him "the mongrel" and Ferdinand was aware of this. A silent, intense hatred filled his being--more than shared by his mother who, until the day of her death, two years before, had always plotted vengeance--without being able to accomplish anything. Either mother or son would willingly have murdered John if a suitable and safe method had presented itself. And now to know that John had married a beautiful far-off cousin and might have children, and so forever preclude the possibility of his--Ferdinand's--own inheritance of Ardayre was a further incentive to hate! If only some means could be discovered to remove John, and soon! But while Ferdinand thought these things, watching his so-called brother from across the room, he knew that he was impotent.

Poisons and daggers were not weapons which could be employed in civilised Paris in the twentieth century! If they would only come to Constantinople!

Amaryllis Ardayre had never seen a Paris ball before. She was enchanted.

The sumptuous, lofty rooms, with their perfect Louis XV gilt _boiseries_, the marvellous clothes of the women, the gaiety in the air! She was accustomed to the new weird dances in England, but had not seen them performed as she now saw them.

"This orgie of mad people is a wonderful sight," Verisschenzko said, as he stood by her side. "Paris has lost all good taste and sense of the fitness of things. Look! the women who are the most expert in the wriggle of the tango are mostly over forty years old! Do you see that one in the skin-tight pink robe? She is a grandmother! All are painted--all are feverish--all would be young! It is ever thus when a country is on the eve of a cataclysm--it is a dance Macabre."

Amaryllis turned, startled, to look at him, and she saw that his eyes were full of melancholy, and not mocking as they usually were.

"A dance Macabre! You do not approve of these tangoes then?"

He gave a small shrug of his shoulders, which was his only form of gesticulation.

"Tangoes--or one steps--I neither approve nor disapprove--dancing should all have its meaning, as the Greek Orchises had. These dances to the Greeks would have meant only one thing--I do not know if they would have wished this to take place in public, they were an aesthetic and refined people, so I think not. We Russians are the only so-called civilised nation who are brutal enough for that; but we are far from being civilised really. Orgies are natural to us--they are not to the French or the English. Savage s.e.x displays for these nations are an acquired taste, a proof of vicious decay, the middle note of the end."

"I learned the tango this Spring--it is charming to dance," Amaryllis protested. She was a little uncomfortable--the subject, much as she was interested in the Russian's downright views, she found was difficult to discuss.

"I am sure you did--you counted time--you moved your charming form this way and that--and you had not the slightest idea of anything in it beyond anxiety to keep step and do the thing well! Yes--is it not so?"

Amaryllis laughed--this was so true!

"What an incredibly false sham it all is!" he went on. "Started by n.i.g.g.e.rs or Mexicans for what it obviously means, and brought here for respectable mothers, and wives, and girls to perform. For me a woman loses all charm when she cheapens the great mystery-ceremonies of love--"

"Then you won't dance it with me?" Amaryllis challenged smilingly--she would not let him see that she was cast down. "I do so want to dance!"

His eyes grew fierce.

"I beg of you not! I desire to keep the picture I have made of you since we met--later I shall dance it myself with a suitable partner, but I do not want you mixed with this tarnished herd."

Amaryllis answered with dignity:

"If I thought of it as you do I should not want to dance it at all." She was aggrieved that her expressed desire might have made him hold her less high--"and you have taken all the bloom from my b.u.t.terfly's wing--I will never enjoy dancing it again--let us go and sit down."

He gave her his arm and they moved from the room, coming almost into conflict with Madame Boleski and her partner, Ferdinand Ardayre, whose movements would have done honour to the lowest n.i.g.g.e.r ring.

"There is your friend, Madame Boleski--she dances--and so well!"

"Harietta is an elemental--as I told you before--it is right that she should express herself so. She is very well aware of what it all means and delights in it. But look at that lady with the hair going grey--it is the Marquise de Saint Vrilliere--of the bluest blood in France and of a rigid respectability. She married her second daughter last week. They all spend their days at the tango cla.s.ses, from early morning till dark--mothers and daughters, grandmothers and demi-mondaines, Russian Grand d.u.c.h.esses, Austrian Princesses--clasped in the arms of incredible sc.u.m from the Argentine, half-castes from Mexico, and farceurs from New York--decadent male things they would not receive in their ante-chambers before this madness set in!"