II

I don't know why I went to see you again. It was certainly not because I believed it was right. My intentions were clear enough. I wanted to seduce you, to cause you to commit an infidelity against your husband. I wanted to make you see that you still needed me, my beautiful girl.

You always thought I was most beautiful in furs. I wrapped myself in a dress so deep a blue it might have been mourning (perhaps it was?), and a great white cape of dense, brutal bearskin, not so elegant, but not so common, and obtruded upon your parlour on an early evening when I knew your Marigny would be out, making ready with your factor for your impending departure to Normandy.

You received me very warmly (and not nearly warmly enough!) and kissed my hands (why not my mouth?), exclaiming how good I was not to forget you. As if I could. 'Put off that dreadful great fur, darling, there is a gorgeous fire here! Why, you look like a hunter!' you laughed, upswept in the giddy joy of nuptial happiness. 'Why has your trapping excursion led you here?'

'Because, Hermangarde,' I said, as evenly as I could, 'I miss you.'

'Miss me? Why, you only saw me the other day, my dear.'

'And you paid more attention to Marigny's waistcoat buttons than you did to me, your dearest friend.'

'Oh, as to that, never mind!' she pouted. I wanted to pinch her lips and bit them. 'Anyway, take care how you say that name. It is mine now, too, you know.'

'Shall I humour you, then, and call you Mme de Marigny?' I demanded. 'You will no longer accept Mimi.'

'Oh, does Hermangarde seem so formal to you? Isolde, Isolde, why do your eyes flash at me? You are usually so cold, so English. To see you behaving as passionately as a Catalane terrifies me, it is so unnatural. Do not be fierce with me, I could not bear it!' your voice was so sweet and caressing, as it had been before, when you were mine, murmuring sweet idle things in my arms. It was as though time had melted between us, and I melted again to your will.

'Then I shall be English, if it suits you better,' I replied, assuming an air I knew you would recall from our teasing play acting, when it amused you to see me behave like a haughty British peer as I lay naked beside you. You laughed, clapped your hands.

'Oh, darling! That is better. I was really so afraid you had come to try convincing me to deceive my husband.'

I saw no use in denying anything. I have always been quite frank with you. 'Hermangarde, your fears were true.' I drew up close to you, and your eyes pled into mine. For a long moment, we were suspended, like a fly in amber, and then your hand rose to cup my face.

You traced my forehead with a fingertip then, my dear Hermangarde, and I knew you were carving your name in the fine hair surrounding my face. It was as though the past months of absence had only sharpened your memories. But could the persistence of these memories convince you that I was worthy of you? Of this? For a moment, I thought I should never have to leave you again, never pretend, never smile sweetly and flirt with your beautiful husband. But your sweet, virginal lips parted, and you spoke the words of my death sentence.

'We can't go on like this, Isolde. Oh, darling, I am so fortunate. I adore my husband. You were a thing permitted to me for a moment. It was a sweet trinket in my memory-box. My most beloved, surely, and dearest, but it must remain a memory.'

It is one of the sweet lies lovers tell one another. 'I will never forget you. You are the only balm for my heart.' Useless. All useless words. I have never employed them, even when I meant them. You know that, and from you, they were like a curse, like the meanest insult. O, the atrocity! I stepped away from you. No doubt you believed I was summoning my self control, but it was not what you thought. I restrained myself, yes, but not from kissing you. I restrained myself from striking you. You were the most poisonous adder at that moment, and I hated you with all the virulence of a rival. Perhaps you saw it, a little, for you drew back and gazed up at me with your wide blue eyes, all innocence and purity.

I wonder, does your beloved husband know that your icon has nothing to do with who you are? But perhaps he has it right. I love you for your flaws, my dear Hermangarde. I love you for your dreadful narcissism, and your sensual enjoyment of your own emotional torment. I love you for your sweet lies, and how, until now, they were never for me. I love your kisses, forbidden and self-conscious, and how you hardly move when I make love to you. You are no wanton, to kindle desire with the inferno of the damned, my darling. You are an icy demon.

'Madame,' I bowed, a masculine gesture you used to giggle about, 'I take my leave.'

'Oh, but why must you go, Isolde?' you crooned. Selfish, evil woman. I was all despairing. Had I ever denied you anything? 'I still love you as my sister, as my heart's dearest friend. I am going to Normandy soon, and I shall not see you again for so long! Stay, please, and we will talk of pleasant things.'

'No,' I said, and rose, and you flinched as though I had struck you. 'I don't think I shall see you before your departure.'

Your eyes fluttered, and you sighed. 'Are you very angry with poor Ryno?' the sweet pout of your mouth made me shudder with revulsion. I still wanted to tangle a fist in your hair, to wrench your head back and devour the skin of your throat. I laughed manically. Anyone, seeing me just then, would have taken me for a mad thing, and by the way you stepped back, perhaps you did.

'Ryno? Oh, madame, your husband is a stranger to me. Why should I be angry with him?'

'He thinks you do not like him very much.'

'I do, Hermangarde. Or I would, if he were not your husband. You now I admire effeminate men. Why, he is nearly as beautiful as my brother Collum.'

'But you always call when he is away, you never speak of him, and you are sullen when I do. Why can you not love him, as I do?'

'I could, madame,' I replied, as coolly as I could to your impossible question, 'but I should have to take him to bed first.' A weaker lover might now linger over how sweet it was to feel the fire of your blow, if only because you had touched them, but I am no sop hearted fool. Perhaps I wanted to pin your arm back and kiss you senseless, but I did not enjoy the slap you dealt. I nodded. It was as much as I deserve. 'Now, perhaps, you will allow me to take my leave of you?'

'Not at all.' You replied, at least as coolly, though to my delight, twin spots of colour had appeared on your cheeks, so that ivory and rose mingled for a long moment. 'Do you not hear the horses in the drive? You will greet my husband. You will wish us the best.'

'Madame, I said I love you. I did not say I was your willing slave. You have money, and a man for that.' I took my leave, though my heart thudded against my corset and I longed to show your husband exactly what I had done to you nearly every night for over a year.

As it happened, I passed him in the hall. He was on his way to see you, the smile of longing, with which I was myself so well acquainted, alight upon his face.

'Mlle la Comtesse, have I only just missed you, then?' he took my hand and raised it to his lips. 'I am despairing.'

'Do not say so, M de Marigny,' I replied, summoning my easiest smile.

'Oh? And why not? Should not my wife's friends be mine, too?'

'If you like, monsieur, but you should take an account of me from your wife first, to ascertain whether you truly want me as a friend.'

'Oh, but I have. And I do.' His smile, so fresh and adorable, would not have been out of place on a girl of fourteen. I could scarcely believe he was more than ten years my senior. 'Hermangarde has only the best things to say of you. She says you are good and honest, and dreadfully clever.'

'All merits, I am afraid, which mark many a good priest, as well, my lord.' I replied glibly. I had no desire to be liked by your Adonis. He laughed. Laughed and pressed my hand.

'Come see us, sometime, in Normandy. We depart within the week. It will be dreary, and Hermangarde is always in remarkably good spirits every time she sees you.'

It is because, I wanted to say, she loves torturing me, your dear, innocent Hermangarde. But I only smiled. 'Perhaps I will. Ask your dear wife to send an invitation when your household there is established.'

'Absolutely, Mlle la Comtesse.'

'Please,' I insisted, despising myself, and intoxicated by his unusual beauty, 'you must call me Isolde, as darling Hermangarde does.'

'Then you will call me Ryno,' he kissed my fingers again, and through the lace of the glove, I luxuriated in the silk of his lips. Hermangarde, it appears as though you have a great weakness for libertine sensualists. I curtseyed, and he laughed. 'It is going to sound terribly peculiar, but there is no chance that I have met you before? How old are you? Surely older than Hermangarde.'

I shook my head. 'Eighteen, my lord—Ryno. Your wife is my senior by nearly five years.'

He looked astonished. 'I beg pardon, mademoiselle. I had thought, I mean—I believed you were—'

'Don't think of it, my lord. You may have seen my sister Alcmene. She is twenty-three.'

He shrugged, and I thought he was about to bid me farewell, but he tossed his head like a movement like an impatient horse. 'Please, my lady—Isolde—you must understand that I have loved Hermangarde—I do love Hermangarde—more than anything in all the world.'

'Why, Ryno, the fact is in every line of you.' I said, probably more caressingly than was proper. If he thought I was trying to seduce him—

'But you still do not approve of me.'

I was so startled that I laughed. I do not believe it put his mind at rest for a moment. 'What do you care, monsieur, if I approve of you? Hermangarde is yours.' I shook my head. 'Anyhow, you make her happy. It is all any devoted friend could ask for.'

'Hermangarde speaks of you as of a guarding angel, leading her through the treacherous waters of Parisian intrigue. I cannot myself believe that you are incapable of fashioning her ideas.'

'You think I dislike you.' I said. He shrugged, a beautiful motion of such elegant shoulders. 'Permit me, then, to lay your fears to rest. I shall embrace you like a brother, do you permit it.' he signified that he did. 'And there shall be peace betwixt our houses.'

I laid my hands upon his shoulders, and drew myself upward, and he bent his head so that I might imprint upon that marble forehead a kiss. It cost all my control and dignity not to weep for the sweet torture of it, and I wondered whether I was coming to revel in agony, as you do, darling.

My arms were round his neck and I was gazing up into his jade-carved eyes when the door to the parlour clicked open, and you emerged, wondering what could be taking your beloved so long to come to you. We started apart, he and I, as though we shared some guilty secret, when all we had in common was loving you. 'My dear,' he said, reaching for you, 'Mlle Isolde and I have made peace, just when you were despairing that we should never get along.'

I don't know why you looked so small and frail in the doorway, but you suddenly were more like my enemy than ever, as though I had come to seduce your husband, and not you. 'All is well, then.' Your voice was high and cold, devoid of all sympathy. 'Will you really not come again before I am gone, Isolde, with so much to beguile you?'

I granted another ironic bow. 'I am at my lady's service, her merest slave.'

'Ah! You have said it!' you cried. 'Friday, then. After the opera.' Your voice was like a queen's command.

'Till then, Mimi.' I smiled deliberately, and touched Marigny's arm.

When I left, I did not intend to see you again, and in a way, I never did.

I saw your husband again, do not mistake, and someone who pretended to be you. She even had all your worst qualities, all the things I thought I loved in you. She had your mouth and eyes and trembling, virginal charm. But she was not you, my love, my darling Hermangarde. She lacked all the fierceness love instilled in you, lacked life and colour and the good things for which you were so often lauded. Is it because of beautiful Ryno's evenings at number 46, Rue du Carmes? Is it the loss of your child? Is it because I do not press my affections upon you, and hardly see you in the sâlons when we meet by accident?

It cannot be that. For all that I flung my raw, untutored heart beneath your glass-shard hells, I never faulted you for ceasing to love me. For a man as beautiful as Marigny, I might have forgotten you myself. His sort, who combine angelic beauty with magnetic intelligence, are rare. Perhaps he's more like Laurence than I thought.

Whatever the cause, Hermangarde, you never returned from Normandy. And I, perhaps the only soul in the world to realise it, I miss you.

Adieu, Mimi.