Page:Nalkowska - Kobiety (Women).djvu/187

Rh came about, but on a sudden I found I was saying too much—or rather, speaking too much to the point.

Finding the position I had taken up was too advanced and too much exposed, I decided to beat a retreat.

"But can you conceive in what the tragedy of my life consists in reality?" I asked.

On which, in mute questioning, he raised his beautiful mournful eyes to mine.

"In that all I have told you is untrue &hellip and all I have not told you is untrue likewise. It is my style to talk of my sadness one day, and the next to tell of my life's cloudless philosophy."

"And to whom of all men do you tell the truth? To Wiazewski? I don't know. Perhaps to no one. When I have taken off, one after another, all the styles I wear, there is nothing more left of me."

At this juncture, Mme. Wildenhoff, dressed in a very low-cut black velvet gown, came up to us.

"Why has not Martha been here to-day?" she asked. "We have not seen her for ever so long."