He spoke with a certain distraction; he was thinking little of what he said, much of the eyes which had looked at him from under the gloom of the fur in the mists of the dawn. He sighed unconsciously as he felt that this innocent young life beside him was no more to him--hardly more--than the flower which she wore at her throat. He recognised all its beauty, spiritual and physical, but only as he might have done that of a picture he looked at, of a poem he read.
'Enjoy yourself, dear; why not?' he added with kindness. 'You were made to smile as a primrose is made to blossom, and it is now mid-April with you.'
He kissed her, and passed his hand carelessly over her hair, then he glanced at the clock on his writing-table.
'I must leave you, for I have an appointment to keep. What are you going to do with your day?'
'Blanchette is to come to me. I have not seen her yet. The children are only now up from Bois le Roy, and Toinon is ill.'
She answered him with a little sigh. She wanted him to understand, and she could not better explain, how her own intense thankfulness for the new joys of her life filled her sensitive conscience with a trembling longing to become more worthy of it all, and to let the light which was about her stream into all dark places, and illumine them with love and peace. But she felt chilled, and discouraged, and silenced; and she had been so accustomed to keep all rebellious thoughts mute, that she did not dream of pursuing a theme to which he appeared indifferent. He kissed her hand and left her. She sank down for a moment on the writing-chair he had occupied before the table, and leaned her forehead on her hands with the first vague sensation of loneliness which had ever touched her since her marriage day.
'If my little child had been born alive,' she thought, 'then I should always have known what duty to do, what use to be----'
It was an infinite trouble to her conscience that in these great palaces of the Othmars she was as useless in her own sight as any one of the green palm trees or the rose-hued parrots in the conservatories. She could give money away, indeed,--almost endlessly; but that did not seem enough to do; that counted to her as nothing, for it cost no effort. It hurt her to feel, as she did feel vaguely, that she was no more the companion of her husband than the marble statue of Athene which stood at one end of his great library. He was infinitely indulgent to her. He was perfectly courteous and kind, and generous even to excess; but he never opened his heart to her, he never made her those familiar confidences which are the sweetest homage that a man can render to a woman, even when they display his own weakness or unwisdom. She had too little experience to be able to measure all that this meant, all of which it argued the absence; but as much perception as she had of it mortified her. At Amyôt she had vaguely suffered from it, but here, in Paris, he seemed very far away from her in thought and feeling. She felt that she was but one of the ornaments of his house, as the azaleas and palms were in their great porcelain vases.