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"I know Marraine and Gillian between them have brought you back. But you are free of me. As you see I shall never do any more harm. No other man will come to grief for the sake of the Wielitzska. . . . I determined that as I had made others pay, so I would pay. I think" suddenly moving towards the window and standing full in the brilliant sunlight "I think you'll agree I've settled the bill."
It was assuredly by the Will of Heaven that the child of Diane Wielitzska had been led to her very doors, and to the subject of her chastening Catherine brought much thought and discrimination. "If you hurt people enough you can make them good." It had been her brother's bitter creed and it was hers.
And now, prompted by Catherine's bitter taunt, the birth of a daughter as his first-born the first happening of the kind for eight successive generations appeared to Hugh in the light of a direct manifestation of God's intention that no son born of Diane Wielitzska should be dowered with such influence as the heir to the Vallincourts must necessarily wield.
"Then it's a good thing heaven saw to it that you were a woman. The world couldn't have done without its Wielitzska." "Oh, I don't know" half-indifferently, half-wistfully. "It's astonishing how little necessary anyone really is in this world. If I were drowned this afternoon the Imperial management would soon find someone to take my place." "But your friends wouldn't," he said quietly.
Then, before he could touch her, she drew away, step by step, and Dan Storran, standing there in tense, breathless silence, beheld what no one else had ever seen the Wielitzska dancing in the moonlight as she alone could dance. He knew nothing of art, nor of the supreme technique which went to make each supple movement a thing of sheer perfection, instinct with rhythm and significance.
Almost as though he had read her thoughts he pursued: "As a dancer, an artist I acknowledge the Wielitzska to be supreme. But as a woman " "Yes? As a woman? Go on. What do you know about me as a woman?" He laughed disagreeably. "I'd judge that in the making of you your soul got left out," he said drily. Magda forced a smile. "I'm afraid I'm very stupid. Do you mind explaining?"
There was nothing to hope for in the future except to hope that Michael might never see her again! At least, she would like to feel that his memory of her of the Wielitzska whose lithe grace and beauty had swept him headlong even against the tide of his convictions would remain for ever unmarred.
There was nothing petty or mean about her, and many a struggling member of her own profession had had good cause to thank "the Wielitzska" for a helping hand. Women found in her a good pal; men, an elusive, provocative personality that bewitched and angered them in the same breath, coolly accepting all they had to offer of love and headlong worship and giving nothing in return.
"How do you want me to pose?" she inquired at last, endeavouring to speak with her usual detachment and conscious that she was failing miserably. "You haven't told me yet." He laughed a little. "I haven't the least intention of telling you," he replied. "'The Wielitzska' doesn't need advice as to how to pose." Magda looked at him uncertainly.
Catherine's incessant denunciations of his "sin" in marrying Diane Wielitzska poured upon him without stint throughout this first year of his marriage seemed to din in his ears anew. Such phrases as "selling your soul," "putting a woman of that type in our sainted mother's place," "mingling the blood of a foreign dancing-woman with our own," jangled against each other in his mind.
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