The next day Othmar called upon Rosselin, and without preface said to him abruptly:

'You had better tell the Duc de BÉthune all I have told you about your pupil. I do not know whether he will believe it or not, but it is wholly intolerable for us to allow him to suppose, as he may suppose from appearances, that there are relations between myself and her which have no existence in fact.'

Rosselin listened and made no reply.

Othmar continued with impatience.

'I do not know what he thinks, but he probably thinks something entirely and grossly unjust to her. He is a man of honour: he will respect confidence if it be placed in him.'

'Why not tell him yourself? He is, I believe, very intimate in your houses.'

'He is no especial friend of mine. He is often at my house, it is true, but personally I have no intimacy with him whatever.'

Rosselin hesitated; then he summoned his courage and said frankly:

'Pardon me, but it is not the Duc de BÉthune or any other man who has any concern with the position which you have created for yourself and for my pupil; the only person for whom it can have any vital interest, or who can exercise any influence over it, is the Countess Othmar, to whom you will not speak of it.'

Othmar coloured; he was greatly annoyed. He was conscious also that Rosselin was right in what he said.

'If my wife heard of her from others, I would tell her how she came there,' he said, with some embarrassment. 'But I can assure you that though M. de BÉthune might believe in the facts as you know them, she would not do so. She never believes in any single motives. She would suppose that I tried to gloss over with sentiment a mere vulgar amour.'

'Men's natures,' he added, bitterly, 'are often as simple, and straight, and frank as a dog's, because, like dogs, we are stupid and trustful; but the mind of a woman of culture is far too critical in its survey and too intricate in its own motives ever to accredit us with the intellectual honesty we possess. It is a quality so stupid that it seems to women as incredible as it is uninteresting.'

Rosselin grew in his turn impatient.

'You, too, appear to me,' he said bluntly, 'to be too fond of Pascal's esprit de finesse, jugement de sentiment. Intellectual analysis is very interesting no doubt, but I never knew it serve in the least to solve the prosaic difficulties of active life. You cannot govern circumstances with theories.'

In himself he thought:

'You create a position in the frankness of your generosity which you perceive becomes equivocal in its aspect to others; you earnestly desire to prevent its appearing so; yet you do not take the one measure which would secure to it immunity from suspicion.'

'I have an idea,' he continued aloud, 'that the best way to test her talents and prepare the world for the appreciation of them, would be for her to recite at some great house, to be seen and heard by some choice audience. Why not in yours? Why not to your friends?'

'In mine? To my acquaintances?'

'Why not? It is, in my opinion, the easiest and most propitious way in which a beginner can try her powers. It is less alarming than a public stage, and the verdict given is more discriminating, and of greater value afterwards. The majority of neophytes have no such chance possible. They may go where they can; begin in the provinces; take anything they can get. But when it can be done, there is no question but that to make an entry into the world in the best society is an immeasurable benefit to any aspirant. It is to be famous at once if successful; whilst, if unsuccessful, the failure is passed over as the caprice of the host in whose house the neophyte is tried. As you are disposed to do anything for her, it seems to me that it would cost you little to ask Madame NadÈge to permit the representation of some saynete, or some short piece like the "Luthier de CrÉmone," at one of her great winter entertainments. She likes novelty; and I believe she often has dramatic representations both in Paris and at AmyÔt.'

'She has them, certainly,' said Othmar with some constraint.

Rosselin looked from under his eyelids at him.

'Then what objection is there? You have said that Madame your wife, first of all of us, saw something like genius in Damaris BÉrarde. She would not refuse to allow her prophecy to be proved true under her own auspices.'

'No; I do not suppose that she would refuse.'

'If you would dislike that she should be asked, that is another matter,' said Rosselin with some impatience, whilst to himself he thought, 'You have made a secret of this thing, and you find what a burdensome and stupid thing a secret is, especially when it is one that circumstances are certain to take out of our hands, whether we will or no.'

'I have no dislike to your project,' replied Othmar with hesitation; 'but,' he added more frankly, 'I must tell you that my wife is not in the least likely to take interest twice in the same person; and I must also tell you, as I did some months ago, that she knows nothing of the present existence of your pupil. If you like to tell her, do so; I give you free permission.'

'I?' echoed Rosselin. 'My dear friend, if such a great lady saw a superannuated old actor enter her presence she would surely order her lackeys to turn him out unheard. I never spoke to Madame NadÈge in my life, though rumour has made me feel well acquainted with her.'

'She always treats genius with respect. It is, perhaps, the only thing she does respect——'

'Are you sure she does not think it escaped from BicÊtre? Most grandes dames do.'

'No; she has too much intellect herself. She is a grande dame, but she is much more besides. She admires talent wherever she finds it; only she thinks that she finds very little.'

'There she is right enough; there is any quantity of mere facility, of mere imitativeness, in our time, but there is very little which deserves a higher name.'

'And you believe that Damaris BÉrarde has more than mere talent?'

'Yes, I believe it. I may be wrong, but I have never been wrong in such judgments, though it seems pretentious to say so. It is because I believe that she has this, that I am anxious for the world to first hear of her in such a way that she may be spared the vulgar and tedious novitiate which is generally unavoidable before a dramatic career; and also I should like to command for her such an audience as may become a title of honour to her, and a protection against false tongues. It is inevitable that your name has been, or will be, associated with hers. Modern life is one huge glass-house. If she be first seen at your house, in your salons, calumny can scarcely attach to your friendship for her. Pardon me if I speak with too intimate a candour. If I said less, I should feel myself almost dragged into the base collusion of a Sir Pandarus.'

Othmar grew pale with anger; he was unaccustomed to familiarity, and the words seemed to him wanting in delicacy and in respect.

'You are very hopeful!' he said bitterly, 'and wonderfully trustful, my good friend, if you imagine that in the world we live in she would be secured from slander by being seen in my drawing-rooms. The only thing they would say, if they were in the mood to say anything, would be that I deceived my wife into facilitating my amours. Society is not so easily persuaded of innocence as you appear to think, whilst it is thoroughly persuaded of the Countess Othmar's indifference to myself!'

In the impulse of his anger he said what he would not have said in a cooler moment. He was greatly irritated at all which was implied in Rosselin's latest words, and the allusion to his wife's indifference to his actions escaped him almost involuntarily.

'I regret if I offend you,' said Rosselin, whose keen eyes read his feelings in his face. 'I say what it seems right to me to say. I know the world has always mauvaise langue, I know it as well as you can do, but there are limits to its impudence. I do not believe that the lowest knave of it all would ever dare to say that you passed any insult on your wife. It has been too well aware of your devotion to her. However, let us abandon my idea. We can find some other way, perhaps; the preparation I have given my pupil has been short, and perhaps immature. She can wait awhile without injury. You have said, I think, that she has means enough of her own to live on as she lives now?'

'She has means enough. Yes.'

'Without wasting her little substance? I suppose her grandfather did not leave her much?'

'She has quite sufficient income for her wants; I believe they are very simple.'

He spoke impatiently and rose. Rosselin, whose tact was always of the acutest kind, understood the hint and changed the subject.

Left to himself, the anger of Othmar soon grew less, and the courtesy of his nature made him regret his impatience with a man double his years and not his equal in station; one, moreover, who had only spoken honestly thoughts which were blameless.

The suggestion had annoyed him both by what it asked, which seemed to him difficult, and by what it implied, which seemed to him offensive. And he repented of his manner of receiving it, and of wounding a person who had warmly answered to his own appeal, and had aided him in regard to Damaris with a sympathy the more noteworthy because it had at first been reluctantly given. Before night he wrote a brief note to Rosselin:

'I regret my impatience, and apologise for it. No doubt you are right in your views. If I can see my way to comply with them I will do so. Meanwhile, believe in my friendship and my high esteem.'

He signed the few lines, and sent them by a messenger to AsniÈres.

When Rosselin received them he was sitting by his solitary lamp examining the condition of a much injured copy on vellum of 'The Birds,' which he had picked up at a bookstall on one of the quays the day before. He put the manuscript down, and read the note with its clear signature of Othmar at the end.

'A graceful amende,' he thought. 'He has a heart of gold, but his judgment is not so much to be trusted as his feelings are. He spoke of his wife's indifference. What could he expect? You cannot get out of a nature what it has not got in it. For five-and-twenty years she had lived for herself: did he suppose that all in a moment she would forget herself and live for him? I daresay he did. He was ready to live for her. That sort of mistake is so often made; and it is always the highest nature which makes it.'

Rosselin lost interest in his Aristophanes for that night. He had a foreboding of some evil. Imaginative minds are like the birds: they know when storms approach.