Page:The Great Secret.djvu/179



Countess de Bergamont laughed in her fashion-battered heart as she watched the slavery of her world-worn sisters towards their uncouth monster. She laughed, as the doctor did, at the new emotions that were stirring within herself, even while she did not try to resist them. It was all so Arcadian, so foolishly fresh, and yet so delicious that she would not, even if she could, have crushed them. They were like violets and other early spring flowers budding through the snow, fragile and short-lived perhaps, yet so precious while they lasted.

It was so curious, she who had been kissed so often to feel this fluttering of the heart, this virginal tremour over the kisses of Anatole. Why should her lips become so moist and sensitive when his lips approached hers who had ran the gamut of fiery lips? Why should she be contented to lie in his arms on this bleak shore, or in that damp cave, and look into his eyes as if eternity brooded within their brown depths? She had looked into many brown, black, blue and grey eyes before, simulating the