And Urania showed her album of coats of arms--the prince had already contributed an impression of his--and next the album with patterns of the queen's ball-dresses. Then the prince laughed and felt in his pocket for an envelope; he opened it and carefully produced a cutting of blue brocade embroidered with silver and seed-pearls.
And he said that he had brought her a pattern of her majesty's last dress; his cousin--not a Black, like himself, but a White, belonging not to the papal but to the court party and a lady-in-waiting to the queen--had procured this cutting for him for Urania's album. Urania would see it herself: the queen would wear the dress at next week's court ball. He was not going, he did not even go to his cousin's officially, not to her parties; but he saw her sometimes, because of the family relationship, out of friendship. And he begged Urania not to give him away: it might injure him in his career--"What career?" Cornélie wondered to herself--if people knew that he saw much of his cousin; but he had called on her pretty often lately, for Urania's sake, to get her that pattern.
And Urania was so grateful that she forgot all about the social position of girls and women, married or unmarried, and would gladly have sacrificed her right to the franchise for such a charming Italian prince. Cornélie became vexed, rose, bowed coldly to the prince and drew Urania with her to the door:
"Don't forget what we have been saying," she warned her. "Be on your guard."
And she saw the prince look at her sarcastically, as they whispered together, suspecting that she was talking about him, but proud of the power of his personality and his title and his attentions over the daughter of an American stockinet-manufacturer.
A coolness had arisen between Mrs. van der Staal and Cornélie; and Cornélie no longer went to dine at Belloni's. She did not see mevrouw and the girls again for weeks; but she saw Duco daily. Notwithstanding the essential differences in their characters, they had grown so accustomed to being together that they missed each other if a day passed without their meeting; and so they had gradually come to lunch and dine together every day, almost as a matter of course: in the morning at the osteria and in the evening at some small restaurant or other, usually very simply. To avoid dividing the bill, Duco would pay one time and Cornélie the next. Generally they had much to talk about: he taught her Rome, took her after lunch to all manner of churches and museums; and under his guidance she began to understand, appreciate and admire. By unconscious suggestion he inspired her with some of his ideas. She found painting very difficult, but understood sculpture much more readily. And she began to look upon him as not merely morbid; she looked up to him, he spoke quite simply to her, as from his exalted standpoint of feeling and knowledge and understanding, of very exalted matters which she, as a girl and later as a young married woman, had never seen in the glorious apotheosis which he caused to rise before her like the first gleam of a dawn, of a new day in which she beheld new types of life, created of all that was noblest in the artist's soul. He regretted that he could not show her Giotto in the Santa Croce at Florence and the Primitives in the Uffizi and that he had to teach her Rome straight away; but he introduced her to all the exuberant art-life of the Papal Renascence, until, under the influence of his speech, she shared that life for a single intense second and until Michael Angelo and Raphael stood out before her, also living. After a day like that, he would think that after all she was not so hopelessly inartistic; and she thought of him with respect, even after the suggestion was interrupted and when she reflected on what she had seen and heard and really, deep down in herself, no longer understood things so well as she had that morning, because she was lacking in love for them. But so much glamour of colour and the past remained whirling before her eyes in the evening that it made her pamphlet seem drab and dull; and the feminist movement ceased to interest her and she did not care about Urania Hope.