"So I had to amuse myself somehow.... I was a bad young woman then, as I am a bad woman now, Dikran; for I've always had a particular sort of vanity which, though it doesn't show on the surface like most silly women's, is deep down in me and has never left me alone; a sort of vanity which makes itself felt in me only in the off-seasons when no one happens to be in love with me and I in love with no one, and tells me that I must be dull and unattractive, utterly insignificant and non-existent; it is a weakness in me, but much stronger than I am, for I've never resisted it, but been only too glad to fall in love again as soon as I could; and that is why I've never made a stand against my impressionableness, why I've never run away from or scotched a love-affair which I knew wouldn't last two weeks, however much I loved the wretched man at the time; it was so much the line of least resistance, it drowned that infernal whisper in me that I was of no account at all in the world. But the tragedy of it was, and is, my dear, that indulgence made the monster grow; it was like a drug, for as soon as the off-season came again it was at its old tricks with twice its old virulence and malice, and, of course, I gave way again. And so on, and so on--did you murmur _dies iræ_, Dikran? Well, perhaps, but who knows? There's a Perfect Fate for every one in this world, and if any one deserves to find it, it's myself who has failed to find it so often....
"At that time that wretched vanity of mine was only a faint whisper, but there it was, and it had to be satisfied, or else I should have become a good woman, which never did attract me very much. I simply had to amuse myself somehow--and so I formed _la grande idée_ of my young life, just as Napoleon III had long ago formed his equally _grande idée_ about Mexico and Maximilian, and with the same disastrous results. True, there was no young man about, but there was a man, anyway, and a Marquis to boot, even though he was a bit old and rigid. But it was exactly that rigidity of his which I wanted to see about; I wanted to find out things, and in my own way, don't you see? And so, deliberately and with all the malice in me, I set out to subdue the old man. Not childishly and gushingly, although I was so young, but with all the finesse of the eternal game, for clever women are born with _rouge_ on their cheeks.