“I?” said Maggie, with a little laugh. “Oh—I think about my dresses, and the new fashions, and parties, and all the things that girls do think of.”
Catrina shook her head. She looked stubborn and unconvinced. Then suddenly she changed the conversation.
“Do you like M. de Chauxville?” she asked.
“No.”
“Does Paul like him?”
“I don’t know.”
Catrina looked up for a moment only. Then her eyes returned to the contemplation of the burning pine-logs.
“I wonder why you will not talk of Paul,” she said, in a voice requiring no answer.
Maggie moved rather uneasily. She had her back turned toward Catrina.
“I am afraid I am rather a dull person,” she answered. “I have not much to say about anybody.”
“And nothing about Paul?” suggested Catrina.
“Nothing. We were talking of M. de Chauxville.”
“Yes; I do not understand M. de Chauxville. He seems to me to be the incarnation of insincerity. He poses—even to himself. He is always watching for the effect. I wonder what the effect of himself upon himself may be.”
Maggie laughed.
“That is rather complicated,” she said. “It requires working out. I think he is deeply impressed with his own astuteness. If he were simpler he would be cleverer.”
Catrina was afraid of Claude de Chauxville, and, because this was so, she stared in wonder at the English girl, who dismissed him from the conversation and her thoughts with a few careless words of contempt. Such minds as that of Miss Delafield were quite outside the field of De Chauxville’s influence, while that Frenchman had considerable power over highly strung and imaginative natures.
Catrina Lanovitch had begun by tolerating him—had proceeded to make the serious blunder of permitting him to be impertinently familiar, and was now exaggerating in her own mind the hold that he had over her. She did not actually dislike him. So few people had taken the trouble or found the expediency of endeavoring to sympathize with her or understand her nature, that she was unconsciously drawn toward this man whom she now feared.
In exaggerating the power he exercised over herself she somewhat naturally exaggerated also his importance in the world and in the lives of those around him. She had imagined him all-powerful; and the first person to whom she mentioned his name dismissed the subject indifferently. Her own entire sincerity had enabled her to detect the insincerity of her ally. She had purposely made mention of the weak spot which she had discovered, in order that her observation might be corroborated. And this Maggie had failed to do.
With the slightest encouragement, Catrina would have told her companion all that had passed. The sympathy between women is so strong that there is usually only one man who is safe from discussion. In Catrina’s case that one man was not Claude de Chauxville. But Maggie Delafield was of different material from this impressionable, impulsive Russian girl. She was essentially British in her capacity for steering a straight personal course through the shoals and quicksands of her neighbors’ affairs, as also in the firm grip she held upon her own thoughts. She was by no means prepared to open her mind to the first comer, and in her somewhat slow-going English estimate of such matters Catrina was as yet little more than the first comer.
She changed the subject, and they talked for some time on indifferent topics—such topics as have an interest for girls; and who are we that we may despise them? We jeer very grandly at girls’ talk, and promptly return to the discussion of our dogs and pipes and clothing.
But Catrina was not happy under this judicious treatment. She had no one in the world to whom she could impart a thousand doubts and questions—a hundred grievances and one great grief. And it was just this one great grief of which Maggie dreaded the mention. She was quite well aware of its existence—had been aware of it for some time. Karl Steinmetz had thrown out one or two vague hints; everything pointed to it. Maggie could hardly be ignorant of the fact that Catrina had grown to womanhood loving Paul.
A score of times Catrina approached the subject, and with imperturbable steadfastness Maggie held to her determination that Paul was not to be discussed by them. She warded, she evaded, she ignored with a skill which baffled the simple Russian. She had a hundred subterfuges—a hundred skilful turns and twists. Where women learn these matters, Heaven only knows! All our experience of the world, our falls and stumbles on the broken road of life, never teach us some things that are known to the veriest schoolgirl standing on the smoother footpath that women tread.
At last Catrina rose to go. Maggie rose also. Women are relentless where they fight for their own secrets. Maggie morally turned Catrina out of the room. The two girls stood looking at each other for a moment. They had nothing in common. The language in which they understood each other best was the native tongue of neither. Born in different countries, each of a mixed race with no one racial strain in common, neither creed, nor education, nor similarity of thought had aught to draw them together. They looked at each other, and God’s hand touched them. They both loved the same man. They did not hate each other.
“Have you everything you want?” asked Catrina.
The question was startling. Catrina’s speech was ever abrupt. At first Maggie did not understand.
“Yes, thanks,” she answered. “I am very tired. I suppose it is the snow.”
“Yes,” said Catrina mechanically; “it is the snow.”
She went toward the door, and there she paused.
“Does Paul love her?” she asked abruptly.
Maggie made no answer; and, as was her habit, Catrina replied to her own question.
“You know he does not—you know he does not!” she said.
Then she went out, without waiting for an answer, closing the door behind her. The closed door heard the reply.
“It will not matter much,” said Maggie, “so
