She did not ask him what art or science he meant; she lighted a second cigarette and said, in her sweetest voice, 'I do not think you are quite so even-tempered as you used to be, Count Othmar. Look, the sun is low; it is time to be going homeward. What are Monsignore and Evelyn doing? Will you call them, please?'
'Stay yet a little while; I have not seen you for so long,' he murmured, ashamed and irritated at his own weakness in letting the words escape him.
'Naturally you have not,' she said, with a gay laugh, 'since you have been in Asia and I in Europe. Why did you go to Asia? People do not do that sort of thing nowadays. If they be annoyed they walk down to their club and play hard, or they ride a horse at a steeplechase, and in a week they think no more about it. And why did you have that duel with de Sénélac? It was very imprudent. I had told you I could not bear that kind of melodrama. Nobody knew certainly, but that was only because they were all stupid; any one might have known. And Sénélac never left his bed for six months; and have you heard that he will limp, they say, for ever?'
Othmar, with a gesture, intimated that the misfortune of his late adversary was a matter of utter indifference.
'If you be sorry that he limps,' he said impatiently, 'be sorry that you gave him your bouquet to carry. Princess, you are very fond of psychological studies, but you do not like to be reminded of what others pay for them. You know well enough what men suffer for you, and through you, but you do not choose ever to blame yourself for making them do so. The world has not changed; the mode of expression may have altered, but men feel as they felt in the days of David or of Æschylus. Love is what it was then, a mere passing pleasure or pain to many, but to some the herald of heaven or of hell, the begetter of heroism or of crime.'
'My dear Othmar, pray excuse me,' said Nadine Napraxine, 'you talk beautifully, you always did, but I cannot stay to hear you when the sun is just going down, and we have only a yacht that crawls to take us home to dinner. It is my fault that it crawls: he would have had a steam one if I had not prevented him. I detest smoke and machinery, but still certainly without them one crawls. Monsignore, will you come if you have finished talking about the Little Sisters of the Poor?'