"And the mouth--"

In a surge of pa.s.sion I threw my arms around the beautiful cruel woman, and covered her face, arms, and breast with glowing kisses.

She returned them with equal fervor--the eyelids closed as in a dream. It was after midnight when she left.

At nine o'clock sharp in the morning everything was ready for departure, as she had ordered. We left the little Carpathian health-resort in a comfortable light carriage. The most interesting drama of my life had reached a point of development whose denouement it was then impossible to foretell.

So far everything went well. I sat beside Wanda, and she chatted very graciously and intelligently with me, as with a good friend, concerning Italy, Pisemski's new novel, and Wagner's music. She wore a sort of Amazonesque travelling-dress of black cloth with a short jacket of the same material, set with dark fur. It fitted closely and showed her figure to best advantage. Over it she wore dark furs. Her hair wound into an antique knot, lay beneath a small dark fur-hat from which a black veil hung. Wanda was in very good humor; she fed me candies, played with my hair, loosened my neck cloth and made a pretty c.o.c.kade of it; she covered my knees with her furs and stealthily pressed the fingers of my hand. When our Jewish driver persistently went on nodding to himself, she even gave me a kiss, and her cold lips had the fresh frosty fragrance of a young autumnal rose, which blossoms alone amid bare stalks and yellow leaves and upon whose calyx the first frost has hung tiny diamonds of ice.

We are at the district capital. We get out at the railway station.

Wanda throws off her furs and places them over my arm, and goes to secure the tickets.

When she returns she has completely changed.

"Here is your ticket, Gregor," she says in a tone which supercilious ladies use to their servants.

"A third-cla.s.s ticket," I reply with comic horror.

"Of course," she continues, "but now be careful. You won't get on until I am settled in my compartment and don't need you any longer.

At each station you will hurry to my car and ask for my orders. Don't forget. And now give me my furs."

After I had helped her into them, humbly like a slave, she went to find an empty first-cla.s.s coupe. I followed. Supporting herself on my shoulder, she got on and I wrapped her feet in bear-skins and placed them on the warming bottle.

Then she nodded to me, and dismissed me. I slowly ascended a third-cla.s.s carriage, which was filled with abominable tobacco-smoke that seemed like the fogs of Acheron at the entrance to Hades. I now had the leisure to muse about the riddle of human existence, and about its greatest riddle of all--_woman_.

Whenever the train stops, I jump off, run to her carriage, and with drawn cap await her orders. She wants coffee and then a gla.s.s of water, at another time a bowl of warm water to wash her hands, and thus it goes on. She lets several men who have entered her compartment pay court to her. I am dying of jealousy and have to leap about like an antelope so as to secure what she wants quickly and not miss the train.

In this way the night pa.s.ses. I haven't had time to eat a mouthful and I can't sleep, I have to breathe the same oniony air with Polish peasants, Jewish peddlers, and common soldiers.

When I mount the steps of her coupe, she is lying stretched out on cushions in her comfortable furs, covered up with the skins of animals. She is like an oriental despot, and the men sit like Indian deities, straight upright against the walls and scarcely dare to breathe.

She stops over in Vienna for a day to go shopping, and particularly to buy series of luxurious gowns. She continues to treat me as her servant. I follow her at the respectful distance of ten paces. She hands me her packages without so much as even deigning a kind look, and laden down like a donkey I pant along behind.

Before leaving she takes all my clothes and gives them to the hotel waiters. I am ordered to put on her livery. It is a Cracovian costume in her colors, light-blue with red facings, and red quadrangular cap, ornamented with peac.o.c.k-feathers. The costume is rather becoming to me.

The silver b.u.t.tons bear her coat of arms. I have the feeling of having been sold or of having bonded myself to the devil. My fair demon leads me from Vienna to Florence. Instead of linen-garbed Mazovians and greasy-haired Jews, my companions now are curly-haired Contadini, a magnificent sergeant of the first Italian Grenadiers, and a poor German painter. The tobacco smoke no longer smells of onions, but of salami and cheese.

Night has fallen again. I lie on my wooden bed as on a rack; my arms and legs seem broken. But there nevertheless is an element of poetry in the affair. The stars sparkle round about, the Italian sergeant has a face like Apollo Belvedere, and the German painter sings a lovely German song.

"Now that all the shadows gather And endless stars grow light, Deep yearning on me falls And softly fills the night."

"Through the sea of dreams Sailing without cease, Sailing goes my soul In thine to find release."

And I am thinking of the beautiful woman who is sleeping in regal comfort among her soft furs.

Florence! Crowds, cries, importunate porters and cab-drivers. Wanda chooses a carriage, and dismisses the porters.

"What have I a servant for," she says, "Gregor--here is the ticket-- get the luggage."

She wraps herself in her furs and sits quietly in the carriage while I drag the heavy trunks. .h.i.ther, one after another. I break down for a moment under the last one; a good-natured _carabiniere_ with an intelligent face comes to my a.s.sistance. She laughs.

"It must be heavy," said she, "all my furs are in it."

I get up on the driver's seat, wiping drops of perspiration from my brow. She gives the name of the hotel, and the driver urges on his horse. In a few minutes we halt at the brilliantly illuminated entrance.

"Have you any rooms?" she asks the portier.

"Yes, madame."

"Two for me, one for my servant, all with stoves."

"Two first-cla.s.s rooms for you, madame, both with stoves," replied the waiter who had hastily come up, "and one without heat for your servant."

She looked at them, and then abruptly said: "they are satisfactory, have fires built at once; my servant can sleep in the unheated room."

I merely looked at her.

"Bring up the trunks, Gregor," she commands, paying no attention to my looks. "In the meantime I'll be dressing, and then will go down to the dining-room, and you can eat something for supper."

As she goes into the adjoining room, I drag the trunks upstairs and help the waiter build a fire in her bed-room. He tries to question me in bad French about my employer. With a brief glance I see the blazing fire, the fragrant white poster-bed, and the rugs which cover the floor. Tired and hungry I then descend the stairs, and ask for something to eat. A good-natured waiter, who used to be in the Austrian army and takes all sorts of pains to entertain me in German, shows me the dining-room and waits on me. I have just had the first fresh drink in thirty-six hours and the first bite of warm food on my fork, when she enters.

I rise.

"What do you mean by taking me into a dining-room in which my servant is eating," she snaps at the waiter, flaring with anger. She turns around and leaves.

Meanwhile I thank heaven that I am permitted to go on eating. Later I climb the four flights upstairs to my room. My small trunk is already there, and a miserable little oil-lamp is burning. It is a narrow room without fire-place, without a window, but with a small air-hole. If it weren't so beastly cold, it would remind me of one of the Venetian _piombi_. [Footnote: These were notorious prisons under the leaden roof of the Palace of the Doges.] Involuntarily I have to laugh out aloud, so that it re-echoes, and I am startled by my own laughter.

Suddenly the door is pulled open and the waiter with a theatrical Italian gesture calls "You are to come down to madame, at once." I pick up my cap, stumble down the first few steps, but finally arrive in front of her door on the first floor and knock.

"Come in!"

I enter, shut the door, and stand attention.

Wanda has made herself comfortable. She is sitting in a neglige of white muslin and laces on a small red divan with her feet on a footstool that matches. She has thrown her fur-cloak about her. It is the identical cloak in which she appeared to me for the first time, as G.o.ddess of love.

The yellow lights of the candelabra which stand on projections, their reflections in the large mirrors, and the red flames from the open fireplace play beautifully on the green velvet, the dark-brown sable of the cloak, the smooth white skin, and the red, flaming hair of the beautiful woman. Her clear, but cold face is turned toward me, and her cold green eyes rest upon me.

"I am satisfied with you, Gregor," she began.

I bowed.