Bertram Pace

{237}

MARRIAGE seemed to Katya a much jollier game than she had anticipated. She liked her house, her garden, her servants; as for Guy, he was too utterly¹ adorable for words. Most of all, she liked patronizing those of her friends and acquaintances who were less fortunate than herself: she enjoyed giving them little dinners during which she would speak a few barbed, malicious² words that made her listeners wince³.

One afternoon, sitting among her roses in the silent garden, she began to think of Captain Pierre Lacroix, her Brussels lover, in whose arms she had nestled so often the previous year. He had really been quite perfect, and since she had returned home to Greece she had frequently, when lying awake at night, reproached herself for not having yielded to his wild solicitations. Never in the years that remained to her was she likely to meet so fine an animal, so fierce a lover, so fascinating a personality.

Her husband, Guy Fallon, was adorable, but he was not Pierre Lacroix. God had made only one Pierre. And he was thousands of miles away in Brussels. Still, she could write to him; if she could not throw herself into love’s furnace, she could at least play with love’s fire....

So she left her roses and went into her cool house with its tiled floors, it great entrance-hall where a white fountain so cleverly made a mist of water, its great walls on to which hung, like butterflies, so many Segantinis, and its wide passages that somehow made her feel like a princess of Ancient Rome.{238}

Her boudoir, however, was rather small. Its furniture was of inlaid rosewood. There were many full-length mirrors sunk deeply into frames of unusual shape, and the stove was made of porcelain⁴, painted green. Sitting down near the open window, she began to write.

“My dear Pierre,—Do not be grieved. I always promised you I would never marry any one but you, but I have been unable to keep my word. What fool was it who years ago said the flesh is weak? My flesh is not like that. It is too strong. It has overwhelmed me. I am married. Yes: it is the end. One is finished when marriage comes. There is nothing left but to sit down and wait until the children arrive.

“When we meet, we must not kiss each other as we used to. You may kiss me like a brother; I, in return will, like a sister, kiss you. That will be all, but even that will be nice. Do you think you will ever be able to come to Salonika to be my brother? No?

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