But Paul contented himself with raising the gloved fingers to his lips, restrained by a feeling of respect for her which she would not have understood and probably did not merit.
“But,” she said with a sudden smile, “I take no responsibility. I am not very sure that it will be a success. I can only try to make you happy—goodness knows if I shall succeed!”
“You have only to be yourself to do that,” he answered, with lover-like promptness and a blindness which is the special privilege of those happy fools.
She gave a strange little smile.
“But how do I know that our lives will harmonize in the least? I know nothing of your daily existence; where you live—where you want to live.”
“I should like to live mostly in Russia,” he answered honestly.
Her expression did not change. It merely fixed itself as one sees the face of a watching cat fix itself, when the longed for mouse shows a whisker.
“Ah!” she said lightly, confident in her own power; “that will arrange itself later.”
“I am glad I am rich,” said Paul simply, “because I shall be able to give you all you want. There are many little things that add to a woman’s comfort; I shall find them out and see that you have them.”
“Are you so very rich, Paul?” she asked, with an innocent wonder. “But I don’t think it matters; do you? I do not think that riches have much to do with happiness.”
“No,” he answered. He was not a person with many theories upon life or happiness or such matters—which, by the way, are in no way affected by theories. By taking thought we cannot add a cubit to the height of our happiness. We can only undermine its base by too searching an analysis of that upon which it is built.
So Paul replied “No,” and took pleasure in looking at her, as any lover must needs have done.
“Except, of course,” she said, “that one may do good with great riches.”
She gave a little sigh, as if deploring the misfortune that hitherto her own small means had fallen short of the happy point at which one may begin doing good.
“Are you so very rich, Paul?” she repeated, as if she was rather afraid of those riches and mistrusted them.
“Oh, I suppose so. Horribly rich!”
She had withdrawn her hand. She gave it to him again, with a pretty movement usually understood to indicate bashfulness.
“It can’t be helped,” she said. “We”—she dwelt upon the word ever so slightly—“we can perhaps do a little good with it.”
Then suddenly he blurted out all his wishes on this point—his quixotic aims, the foolish imaginings of a too chivalrous soul. She listened, prettily eager, sweetly compassionate of the sorrows of the peasantry whom he made the object of his simple pity. Her gray eyes contracted with horror when he told her of the misery with which he was too familiar. Her pretty lips quivered when he told her of little children born only to starve because their mothers were starving. She laid her gloved fingers gently on his when he recounted tales of strong men—good fathers in their simple, barbarous way—who were well content that the children should die rather than be saved to pass a miserable existence, without joy, without hope.
She lifted her eyes with admiration to his face when he told her what he hoped to do, what he dreamed of accomplishing. She even made a few eager, heartfelt suggestions, fitly coming from a woman—touched with a woman’s tenderness, lightened by a woman’s sympathy and knowledge.
It was in its way a tragedy, the picture we are called to look upon—these newly made lovers, not talking of themselves, as is the time-honored habit of such. Surrounded by every luxury, both highborn, refined, and wealthy; both educated, both intelligent. He, simple-minded, earnest, quite absorbed in his happiness, because that happiness seemed to fall in so easily with the busier, and, as some might say, the nobler side of his ambition. She, failing to understand his aspirations, thinking only of his wealth.
“But,” she said at length, “shall you—we—be allowed to do all this? I thought that such schemes were not encouraged in Russia. It is such a pity to pauperize the people.”
“You cannot pauperize a man who has absolutely nothing,” replied Paul. “Of course, we shall have difficulties; but, together, I think we shall be able to overcome them.”
Etta smiled sympathetically, and the smile finished up, as it were, with a gleam very like amusement. She had been vouchsafed for a moment a vision of herself in some squalid Russian village, in a hideous Russian-made tweed dress, dispensing the necessaries of life to a people only little raised above the beasts of the field. The vision made her smile, as well it might. In Petersburg life might be tolerable for a little in the height of the season—for a few weeks of the brilliant Northern winter—but in no other part of Russia could she dream of dwelling.
They sat and talked of their future as lovers will, knowing as little of it as any of us, building up castles in the air, such edifices as we have all constructed, destined, no doubt, to the same rapid collapse as some of us have quailed under. Paul, with lamentable honesty, talked almost as much of his stupid peasants as of his beautiful companion, which pleased her not too well. Etta, with a strange persistence, brought the conversation ever back and back to the house in London, the house in Petersburg, the great grim castle in the Government of Tver, and the princely rent-roll. And once on the subject of Tver, Paul could scarce be brought to leave it.
“I am going back there,” he said at length.
“When?” she asked,
