Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/69

Rh did not once take her eyes from his face during the whole wild outburst and that her cheeks seemed to flush more vividly than ever. Only from time to time she glanced at the expressionless—one might even say bored—face of her husband, and once a piteous smile stole into her expression, as her eyes darkened for a moment.

"Ah, you are drawing comparison," I mused.

"You dream of great things," commented the young woman, "but will you succeed?"

"Yes!" answered Kazik; and this short word stood out like a challenge.

"And then you will search for the most beautiful, the richest, the most magnificent woman in the world and will marry her?" asked the young bride with a playful smile.

"The most beautiful and the most magnificent—yes," was the reply, "but not the richest. I shall not need money."

Then I made a new observation. Kazik looked steadily for a moment at the face of the woman, with evident warmth in his gaze scanned her whole figure and turned dreamily away to some unimportant object in the corner of the room. Madame Vera nervously smoothed her hair and laughed, as it seemed to me, too loudly and too unnaturally.

I was conscious that Chance had again made me witness to the life struggle of individuals quite foreign to me and that I should behold minor, or even foolish, events that would bulk big in the lives of these three individuals and might entirely dominate their happiness and fortunes. These people, accidentally brought into my life by the community of business interests, might easily have remained unknown and of no particular interest to me, but Fate decided otherwise.