"Why don't you speak to me?" said the princess, vaguely uneasy and looking into the painter's eyes. "Are not you happy?"
"Can you think otherwise?" said Paul; "but you must understand my surprise. You will confess I had little reason to expect what has happened. I feared your husband might use violence to you, and I was so sure of a challenge from him that I have spoken to a couple of friends."
"As your seconds! In a duel!" cried Lise Olsdorf, throwing her arms around the young man's neck. "Oh, if I had dreamed the prince had such an idea he should not have left this room alive."
"Dear, foolish child!" said Paul Meyrin, returning the passionate embrace. "But, while awaiting the divorce, what will you do? How shall we live? Will not the prince make you leave Paris?"
"He knows the child is not his, and I did not try to deceive him."
"Perhaps he will want to take it from us."
The Princess Olsdorf sat up suddenly. She grew very pale.
The fact is the adulterous wife was an excellent mother. Two years before, when her son was attacked by a contagious sickness, she had nursed him with a devotion which had been the admiration of everybody, and she adored doubly Paul Meyrin's child.
"Take away my daughter--separate me from her!" she cried. "Oh, no, it is impossible; the prince has not the thought. He can not disown her, for the consequence of a disavowal would be a petition for divorce from me. He will leave me Tekla. What could he do with her? He can not love her. We are both mad to think of it."
The painter tried his best to calm Lise. They agreed to await the course of events and act accordingly, keeping secret from everybody what was going on.
Paul Meyrin, indeed, was not at all anxious to acquaint his relatives with the new turn that his amour with the princess had taken, for he foresaw the opposition that his mother and sister, and especially his sister, would offer to the marriage. Although he had never said anything outright to the two women upon the subject, he had every reason to believe that they knew the true state of his relations with Lise Olsdorf, and that they were well aware of his being the father of little Tekla. If the Meyrins received at their house Paul's acknowledged mistress, it was because their vanity was flattered and their interest lay in making her welcome. Under the pretense that she adored artists, and had the right to act in Paris as she would have done in Russia, she heaped presents on all the Meyrins, big and little. Her love, then, cost them nothing; on the contrary. As formerly, the painter lived with the family and shared its expenses, giving, too, himself generously, for he reflected that he had no calls upon him and was making plenty of money.