With two rapid strides Wanda reaches my side, she kneels down beside me, and places my head in her lap. "Are you ill? Your eyes glow so, do you love me? I want you to love me."

She draws forth a short dagger. I start with fright when its blade gleams in front of my eyes. I actually believe that she is about to kill me. She laughs, and cuts the ropes that bind me.

Every evening after dinner she now has me called. I have to read to her, and she discusses with me all sorts of interesting problems and subjects. She seems entirely transformed; it is as if she were ashamed of the savagery which she betrayed to me and of the cruelty with which she treated me. A touching gentleness transfigures her entire being, and when at the good-night she gives me her hand, a superhuman power of goodness and love lies in her eyes, of the kind which calls forth tears in us and causes us to forget all the miseries of existence and all the terrors of death.

I am reading _Manon l'Escault_ to her. She feels the a.s.sociation, she doesn't say a word, but she smiles from time to time, and finally she shuts up the little book.

"Don't you want to go on reading?"

"Not to-day. We will ourselves act _Manon l'Escault_ to-day. I have a rendezvous in the Cascine, and you, my dear Chevalier, will accompany me; I know, you will do it, won't you?"

"You command it."

"I do not command it, I beg it of you," she says with irresistible charm. She then rises, puts her hands on my shoulders, and looks at me.

"Your eyes!" she exclaims. "I love you, Severin, you have no idea how I love you!"

"Yes, I have!" I replied bitterly, "so much so that you have arranged for a rendezvous with some one else."

"I do this only to allure you the more," she replied vivaciously. "I must have admirers, so as not to lose you. I don't ever want to lose you, never, do you hear, for I love only you, you alone."

She clung pa.s.sionately to my lips.

"Oh, if I only could, as I would, give you all of my soul in a kiss-- thus--but now come."

She slipped into a simple black velvet coat, and put a dark _bashlyk_ [Footnote: A kind of Russian cap.] on her head. Then she rapidly went through the gallery, and entered the carriage.

"Gregor will drive," she called out to the coachman who withdrew in surprise.

I ascended the driver's seat, and angrily whipped up the horses.

In the Cascine where the main roadway turns into a leafy path, Wanda got out. It was night, only occasional stars shone through the gray clouds that fled across the sky. By the bank of the Arno stood a man in a dark cloak, with a brigand's hat, and looked at the yellow waves. Wanda rapidly walked through the shrubbery, and tapped him on the shoulder. I saw him turn and seize her hand, and then they disappeared behind the green wall.

An hour full of torments. Finally there was a rustling in the bushes to one side, and they returned.

The man accompanied her to the carriage. The light of the lamp fell full and glaringly upon an infinitely young, soft and dreamy face which I had never before seen, and played in his long, blond curls.

She held out her hand which he kissed with deep respect, then she signaled to me, and immediately the carriage flew along the leafy wall which follows the river like a long green screen.

The bell at the garden-gate rings. It is a familiar face. The man from the Cascine.

"Whom shall I announce?" I ask him in French. He timidly shakes his head.

"Do you, perhaps, understand some German?" he asks shyly.

"Yes. Your name, please."

"Oh! I haven't any yet," he replies, embarra.s.sed--"Tell your mistress the German painter from the Cascine is here and would like-- but there she is herself."

Wanda had stepped out on the balcony, and nodded toward the stranger.

"Gregor, show the gentleman in!" she called to me.

I showed the painter the stairs.

"Thanks, I'll find her now, thanks, thanks very much." He ran up the steps. I remained standing below, and looked with deep pity on the poor German.

Venus in Furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. He will paint her, and go mad.

It is a sunny winter's day. Something that looks like gold trembles on the leaves of the cl.u.s.ters of trees down below in the green level of the meadow. The camelias at the foot of the gallery are glorious in their abundant buds. Wanda is sitting in the loggia; she is drawing. The German painter stands opposite her with his hands folded as in adoration, and looks at her. No, he rather looks at her face, and is entirely absorbed in it, enraptured.

But she does not see him, neither does she see me, who with the spade in my hand am turning over the flower-bed, solely that I may see her and feel her nearness, which produces an effect on me like poetry, like music.

The painter has gone. It is a hazardous thing to do, but I risk it.

I go up to the gallery, quite close, and ask Wanda "Do you love the painter, mistress?"

She looks at me without getting angry, shakes her head, and finally even smiles.

"I feel sorry for him," she replies, "but I do not love him. I love no one. _I used to love you, as ardently, as pa.s.sionately, as deeply as it was possible for me to love,_ but now I don't love even you any more; my heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad."

"Wanda!" I exclaimed, deeply moved.

"Soon, you too will no longer love me," she continued, "tell me when you have reached that point, and I will give back to you your freedom."

"Then I shall remain your slave, all my life long, for I adore you and shall always adore you," I cried, seized by that fanaticism of love which has repeatedly been so fatal to me.

Wanda looked at me with a curious pleasure. "Consider well what you do," she said. "I have loved you infinitely and have been despotic towards you so that I might fulfil your dream. Something of my old feeling, a sort of real sympathy for you, still trembles in my breast. When that too has gone who knows whether then I shall give you your liberty; whether I shall not then become really cruel, merciless, even brutal toward; whether I shall not take a diabolical pleasure in tormenting and putting on the rack the man who worships me idolatrously, the while I remain indifferent or love someone else; perhaps, I shall enjoy seeing him die of his love for me. Consider this well."

"I have long since considered all that," I replied as in a glow of fever. "I cannot exist, cannot live without you; I shall die if you set me at liberty; let me remain your slave, kill me, but do not drive me away."

"Very well then, be my slave," she replied, "but don't forget that I no longer love you, and your love doesn't mean any more to me than a dog's, and dogs are kicked."

To-day I visited the Venus of Medici.

It was still early, and the little octagonal room in the Tribuna was filled with half-lights like a sanctuary; I stood with folded hands in deep adoration before the silent image of the divinity.

But I did not stand for long.