Page:Small Souls (1919).djvu/49

Rh This, of the Spanish Legation, or Mrs. This or the Freule That, of “the set,” was at the Hague. People did not stare at her, in Rome; and this was almost a disappointment. . . . Besides, her increasing and often wounded vanity left a certain void within her, a sense of boredom. De Staffelaer, ever courtly, pleasant and in love, with the apprehensive love of an old man for the young wife whom he is afraid lest he should soon cease to attract, ended by irritating her and upsetting her nerves. . ..

But this, at the time, was nothing more—nor anything more serious—than boredom and vague discontent. . . . Since then, life had set its mark on Constance. Often now, as a woman of forty-two, she felt a dull melancholy in pondering on her life; she let her life, one woman’s life, glide past her gaze once more; she began with her childish years in India; saw once more the splendour and grandeur of Buitenzorg; criticized her own vanity during her girlhood at the Hague; saw her marriage as the great mistake of her life; saw, as the second, irrevocable mistake of her life, all that had happened with Van der Welcke. . . . Her life had been warped beyond remedy. She had gone from vanity to wantonness, to reckless play-acting with that life, big with fate, which she had first seen only as a dazzling reflection, a reflection of mirrors, candles, satin, jewels, titles and orders: the setting of the play; a little flirtation, a little jesting—not even always witty—with smart men of the world, refined and elegant in their dress-clothes, who assumed airs