“Perhaps you were writing an interesting letter to someone close to your heart?”
“No. I was correcting printer’s proofs.”
“Proofs?”
“Yes …”
“Do you write?”
“This is my first attempt.”
“A novella?”
“No, an article.”
“An article? What about?”
She told him the long title. He looked at her open-mouthed. She laughed cheerfully.
“You wouldn’t have thought it, would you?”
“Santa Maria!” he muttered in astonishment, not accustomed in his world to ‘modern women’, banding together in the Women’s Movement. “In Dutch?”
“In Dutch.”
“Next time write in French: then I’ll be able to read it …”
She promised with a laugh and poured him a cup of tea, and offered him sweets. He nibbled a few.
“Are you so serious? Have you always been like this? You weren’t serious the other day, were you?”
“Sometimes I’m very serious.”
“So am I.”
“I realise that. On that occasion, if I had not turned up, you might have become very serious.”
He laughed fatuously and looked at her knowingly.
“You are an exceptional woman!” he said. “Very interesting and very clever. What you want to happen, happens …”
“Sometimes …”
“Sometimes, what I want to happen, happens too … Sometimes I’m very clever too. When I want to be, but usually I don’t want to be.”
“The other day you did …”
He laughed.
“Yes! You were cleverer than I was then. Tomorrow I may be cleverer than you.”
“Who knows!”
They both laughed. He nibbled the sweets, one after the other, from the dish, and preferred a glass of port to tea. She poured him one.
“May I give you something?” he asked earnestly.
“What?”
“A souvenir of our first meeting.”
“That is charming of you. What can it be?”
He took something wrapped in tissue paper from his inside pocket and handed it to her.
She opened the package and saw a piece of antique Venetian lace, flounced, for a low petticoat.
“Please accept it,” he entreated her. “It’s a very fine piece. It gives me such joy to make a gift of it to you.”
She looked at him with all her coquettishness in her eyes, as if wanting to see through him.
“You must wear it like this …”
He got up, took the lace, draped it across her white peignoir from shoulder to shoulder. His fingers fiddled with the pleats, his lips brushed hers for a moment. She thanked him for his gift. He sat down.
“I am glad that you are accepting it.”
“Have you given Miss Hope something too?”
He laughed, his triumphant laugh.
“Samples are good enough for her, from the queen’s evening gowns. I would not dare give you samples. You I give antique Venetian lace.”
“But you nearly ruined your career for that sample?”
“Oh well!” he laughed.
“What career?”
“Oh no!” he said defensively. “Tell me, what is your advice?”
“How do you mean?”
“Should I marry her?”
“I’m against all marriage, between educated people …”
Now he was certain of a liaison between her and Van der Staal, if he had had any lingering doubts.
“And … do you regard me as educated?”
She laughed, coquettishly, with a brief flash of contempt.
“Listen, will you be serious.”
“With the greatest pleasure.”
“I don’t find either you or Miss Hope suited to free love.”
“So I am not educated?”
“I don’t mean you are not cultivated. I mean modern education.”
“So I am not modern?”
“No,” she said, a little irritated.
“Teach me to be modern.”
She laughed nervously.
“Oh, don’t let’s talk like this. What do I advise you? Not to marry Urania.”
“Why not?”
“Because your life together would be a disaster. She is a sweet little American parvenue …”
“I am offering her what I have; she is offering me what she has …”
He nibbled the sweets. She shrugged her shoulders.
“Do it then,” she said indifferently.
“Tell me you don’t want it to happen, and I won’t do it.”
“And your papa? And the marchesa?”
“What do you know about them?”
“Oh, everything … and nothing!”
“You are a demon!” he exclaimed. “An angel and a demon. Tell me, what do you know about my father and the marchesa?”
“For how many millions are you selling yourself to Urania? For no less than ten million?”
He looked at her in stupefaction.
“But the marchesa is content with five. It’s not bad: five million … Dollars or lire?”
He clapped his hands together.
“You are a devil!” he exclaimed. “You are an angel and devil! How do you know? How do you know? Do you know everything??”
She threw herself backwards and laughed.
“Everything …”
“But how?”
She looked at him, shook her head, played the coquette.
“Tell me …”
“No. It’s my secret …”
“And you don’t think I should sell myself?”
“I do not dare advise you on your interests.”
“And as far as Urania is concerned?”
“I advise her against it.”
“Have you already advised her against it?”
“Now and then …”
“So you are my enemy?” he said angrily.
“No,” she said softly, wanting to win him back. “A friend …”
“A friend? To what point?”
“As far as I want to go.”
“Not as far as I want to go …?”
“Oh no, never!”
“But perhaps we both want to go just as far?”
He had stood up, his blood on fire. She sat calmly, almost languidly, with her head thrown back. She did not answer. He fell to his knees, grasped her hand and kissed it before she could push him away.
“Oh angel, angel! Oh, demon!” he muttered as he kissed.
She pulled her hand free, pushed him gently away and said:
“Italians are so quick to kiss!”
She was laughing at him. He got up.
“Teach me what Dutch women are like, even though they are slower than we are.”
She motioned him to a chair with an imperious gesture.
“Sit down. I am not a specifically Dutch woman. Otherwise I would not have come to Rome. I pride myself on being cosmopolitan. But we weren’t talking about me, we’re talking about Urania. Are you seriously intending to marry her?”
“What can I do if you are working against me? Why don’t you work with me, as a dear friend …?”
She hesitated. Neither Urania nor he were ripe for her ideas. She despised them both. Right, let them marry then: he to become rich, she to become princess-duchess.
“Listen!” she said, leaning towards him. “You are marrying her for her millions. But your marriage will be unhappy from the start. She is a fickle young thing; she wants glamour … and you are member of the Blacks.”
“We can live in Nice: she can do as she likes. We’ll come to Rome now and then, and occasionally San Stefano. And unhappy …”—he pulled a tragic face—“but what do I care. I’m not happy anyway. I shall try to make Urania happy. But my heart … will be elsewhere …”