For the first time since he had come into the room, Marianne really smiled. The surge of indignation which had taken possession of her a moment ago was still quivering inside, but she could not help feeling a sudden liking for this strange, unhappy man.
"Don't be sorry. But for you, I don't know what would have become of us on that hellish voyage—and by now my old friend Jolival would be a slave or worse! As for Captain Beaufort, it was not within your power to save him from—from disaster!" Her voice broke and she said no more, knowing that she could not trust herself not to break down. The mere mention of Jason's name was enough to overwhelm her, even though she knew that such emotion was out of place here and that for all the unusual nature of the contrast between them it could not be pleasant for Prince Sant'Anna to be obliged to discuss his wife's lover.
In fact he had risen with some abruptness and was pacing the room with his back to her. As before, on the deck of the Sea Witch, Marianne was struck by his lithe, easy bearing and by the impression of controlled strength about him, but she was discovering that even with his face uncovered, even without the leather mask whose whiteness now was self-explanatory, this man remained an enigma, not easily to be understood.
She was too much a woman not to wonder how he felt toward her. The shattering announcement he had just made, the fact that he could say in so many words that he wanted her to have the child conceived under such appalling circumstances, was almost insulting. It suggested that the prince cared nothing for her feelings and that, to use a favorite expression of Napoleon's, she was in his eyes nothing more or less than a womb!
And yet, when he could have gone quietly back to his Tuscan estates after killing Damiani, he had deliberately chosen a perilous adventure in order to go after a wife who, when all was said and done, had not been much good to him. What was it he had said? "I could not help myself… It was stronger than I was…"Or was his real interest in Jason? Curiosity, after all, was not an exclusively female prerogative. Perhaps it was only natural that he should want to meet the man his wife loved. But it was a very great risk to take for such a meager satisfaction because, in going aboard the Witch, Corrado Sant'Anna had been cutting himself off from all his usual roots. All he would have found at the end of the voyage as originally planned was the vast, unknown American continent, lying on the other side of the ocean—and the lifetime of slavery to which he almost certainly would have been condemned by the color of his skin.
Unable to find an answer to any of these questions, Marianne gazed helplessly at the tall white figure. Their conversation had reached such an extremely difficult stage that she was at a loss how to go on. But it was the prince who broke the silence.
Standing before the portrait of the hospodar which he was studying with remarkable concentration, he said without turning around: "Man has a very great need to perpetuate himself. That one up there tried all his life to do it but without success. I am an aberration in my family tree which will pass and be forgotten, but only if there is an heir—one who is normal and free from the taint I bear—to come after me. You are my one chance of that. Will you give me my heir?"
Marianne knew that the moment she dreaded had arrived and she screwed up her courage for the battle ahead. When she spoke, her voice was gentle but firm.
"No," she said. "I can't. Nor have you any right to ask it of me, knowing my horror of this child."
Still, he did not look at her but he said: "That evening, in the chapel of our house, you swore to honor—and obey."
There was no mistaking his meaning and Marianne shuddered, overcome by a bitter sense of shame because this unexpected husband of hers, whom she had thought to keep quite apart from her private life, had known better than anyone in what light she had regarded her marriage vows. What had seemed to her then a mere formality had become all too serious now.
"It is in your power to compel me," she said in a low voice. "You have already done so, indeed, by bringing me here. But you will never obtain my consent willingly."
He came toward her slowly and Marianne stepped back instinctively. There was no trace of sadness now in that dark, handsome face, nor yet of gentleness. The blue eyes were chips of ice and where she had expected to see disappointment she read only cold contempt.
"Then you will be taken back to the house of the Jewess tonight," he said," and by this time tomorrow nothing will remain of the thing that so disgusts you. For myself, it only remains for me to bid you goodbye, Madame."
"Goodbye! When we have only just met?"
He bowed curtly. "This is where we part. You had better forget that you have ever seen my face. I can trust you to keep my secret, I hope. You may inform me of what you have decided through Princess Morousi when you see fit to do so."
"But I haven't decided anything! This is all so sudden, so—"
"You cannot live openly with another man and yet continue to bear my name. These new laws of Napoleon's will make it possible for you to obtain a divorce as you could not have done before. Make use of them. My men of business will see to it that you have no cause for complaint. After that, you will be able to carry out your original intention as it was before your plans were so rudely interrupted at Venice and follow Beaufort to America. I will take it upon myself to inform the emperor, and your godfather when I see him."
Stung by his contemptuous tone, Marianne gave a little shrug.
"Follow Jason?" she said bitterly. "You may well say that when you know it is impossible! We don't know where he is or even if he is still alive…"
It was these words which finally succeeded in shattering the prince's iron control. Abruptly, his anger exploded.
"And that's the only thing you care for in the whole world, isn't it?" he snarled. "That slave trader behaved to you like a swine, he's treated you like a wench out of the gutter! Have you forgotten that he would have given you to the lowest man on board his ship? To the runaway slave he picked up off the dock at Chioggia, whom his friend Leighton thought to sell at a good profit at the first opportunity? And still you want to lick his boots and crawl after him on your belly like a bitch in heat! Well, you will find him, never fear, and then you may go on destroying yourself for his pleasure."
"How do you know?"
"I'm telling you he's alive! The fishermen of Monemvasia who found him wounded and unconscious when his precious Leighton cast him off like unwanted baggage, when he could get no more use of him, have cared for him and are doing so still. Moreover, gold has been given them and their orders are clear. When the American is quite recovered he will be handed a letter telling him that you are in Constantinople, and so, too, is his ship. For after all," he added with a scornful laugh, "we cannot be sure that your presence alone would be enough to bring him here! So you have only to wait and your hero will come to you. Farewell, Madame!"
He bowed briefly and before Marianne, stunned by his outburst, could make a single move, he was gone.
In the middle of the darkening room, Marianne stood for a moment as though turned to stone, listening to the angry footsteps dying away along the stone floor of the wide hall. She was a prey to the strangest feeling of loneliness and desolation. The brief meeting, a first encounter which looked very much as if it would also be the last, had left her oddly drained. She felt unhappy and miserably conscious of having in some way, by her own doing, stepped down from a pedestal.
Now that she knew what her extraordinary husband was really like, things had begun to assume very different proportions and she could no longer afford the same detachment and mental freedom in relation to everything concerning him which had been hers hitherto. Things were very different now, and if the prince's anger—of which she was very well aware—sprang largely from disappointment, that in turn might be less for the child denied him than for the woman who denied it.