Moths by Ouida — page 344: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

340 MOTHS. Madame Nelaguine, forcing herself to do what she loathed, went across Europe in the cold, wet weather as swiftly as she could travel, and visited Szarisla. She strove to persuade her sister-in-law to accept the inevitable, and return to the Hotel Zouroff and such consolations as the great world and its homage could contain. ‘‘Be reasonable, Vera,” she urged, with the tears standing in her keen, marmoset-like eyes. ‘‘ My dear, society is made up of women like Jeanne de Sonnaz. Receive her; what does it matter? Itis not as if you loved your husband, as if your heart were wounded. Receive her; what will it cost you? You need never even see her in intimacy. Goto heron her days; let her come to you on yours. Show yourself half an hour at her balls; let her sbow herself at yours. Thatis all. Whatdoes it amount to? what does it cost? Nothing.” ‘Little, no doubt,” answered Vere. ‘‘Only—all one’s self- respect.” And she was not to be changed or persuaded. ‘¢T shall live and die here, very likely,” she said, at last, weary of resistance. ‘‘It is as well as any other place. It is better than Paris. Your brother hassent me here to coerce me. Go - back and tell him that force will not succeed with me. Lam not a coward.” : Madame Nelaguine, grieved and yetimpatient, shuddered, and left the bleakness and loneliness of Vere’s prison-house with res lief, and hurried back to thé world and its ways, and said im petuously and bittterly to her brother, ‘‘Do not darken my doors, Sergius, while your wife is shut in that jail of ice. Do not come to me, do not speak tome. You are a brute. Would to Heaven Jeanne de Sonnaz were your wife! then you would be dealt with aright. Are you mad? Do you wish to make her faithless? Can you think she will bear such a life as that? Can you leave a woman as young as she without friends, lovers, chil- dren, and expect her to change to snow, like the country you shut her in? Are youmad? If she shame herself there any way—an way—can you blame her? Canyou take a girl, a child, and teac her what the passions of men are, and then bid her lead a nun‘s life just when she has reached the full splendor and force of her womanhood——” ‘‘She is asaint, you say,” he answered, with a bitter smile, and parted from his sister in fierce anger. In the bovdoir of the Faubourg St. Germain his friend knew well how tu surround him with an influence which little by little isolated him and alienated him from all who had the courage to speak of his wife. Jeanne de Sonnaz had one set purpose, the purpose which she had let him seein her at Arcachon; and until she should suc- beed in it she suffered no hand but her own to guide him. The lily might have astem of steel and never be bent, but it could be broken. Soilless though it might remain in its solitude amidst the snow it should be broken ; she had said it in her soul. ‘* Ce que femme veut, Phomme veut,” was the proverb as her exe perience read it, | com GE 700 <) (ere)