'When I choose,' she thought, 'he will leave her and she will break her heart. She will know nothing about such reprisal as a Parisienne should take; she will never be a Parisienne; she will always be a patrician of the _vieille souche_, which is quite another thing; she will always be an innocent woman, with a soul like a lily. She is afraid of me, and she dislikes me; she tries to hide it all she can, but she does not know how. Platon admires her; that is what he ought to have married; I dare say she would never have found him ugly or clumsy; he would have been her husband--that would have been enough to make him sacred; there are women like that. She adores Othmar, but she knows nothing about him; he is a little like Hamlet, and she is as much puzzled as Ophelia. Of course she would have worshipped any man who had prevented her being buried in a convent; she is as full of life as a lime-tree in flower. She is longing to look at me always, but she does not dare. She is quite beautiful, quite, but all that is no use to her. He knows it, but he does not care for it. He will keep her in his house and have children by her, but he will care no more for her than for Mercié's Andromache, that stands in his vestibule. Whether you are Venus or a Hottentot matters so little if a man do not love you; if you do not know how to make him love you. They always say a modest woman never does know how; but I do not think I am especially immodest, yet I know----'
The disjointed thoughts drifted through her mind without interfering with the current of her conversation. Metaphysicians may dispute the existence of two simultaneous trains of thought, but women know their possibility.
Her enigmatical victorious smile came on her lips as that consciousness soothed and stimulated her.
She had too much honour to make any deliberate project to seduce him from his allegiance. Her coquetries might be less merciful than many more guilty, but they had never ceased to be innocent in the world's conception of the term. The coldness with which Othmar had reproached her was still one of the most definite of her qualities. It was the amulet of her magic, the secret of her power. She was as yet a perfectly passionless woman, and as such ruled the passions of men.