aters run deep, say the
English, and the Italians, Still waters ruin bridges.

These adages would not be accurate if one did not forget them in
practise, and the professional analyst of the feminine heart had entirely
forgotten them on that evening.

CHAPTER V

COUNTESS STENO

A woman less courageous than the Countess, less capable of looking a
situation in the face and of advancing to it, such an evening would have
marked the prelude to one of those nights of insomnia when the mind
exhausts in advance all the agonies of probable danger. Countess Steno
did not know what weakness and fear were.

A creature of energy and of action, who felt herself to be above all
danger, she attached no meaning to the word uneasiness. So she slept, on
the night which followed that soiree, a sleep as profound, as refreshing,
as if Gorka had never returned with vengeance in his heart, with threats
in his eyes. Toward ten o'clock the following morning, she was in the
tiny salon, or rather, the office adjoining her bedroom, examining
several accounts brought by one of her men of business. Rising at seven
o'clock, according to her custom, she had taken the cold bath in which,
in summer as well as winter, she daily quickened her blood. She had
breakfasted, 'a l'anglaise', following the rule to which she claimed to
owe the preservation of her digestion, upon eggs, cold meat, and tea. She
had made her complicated toilette, had visited her daughter to ascertain
how she had slept, had written five letters, for her cosmopolitan salon
compelled her to carry on an immense correspondence, which radiated
between Cairo and New York, St. Petersburg and Bombay, taking in Munich,
London, and Madeira, and she was as faithful in friendship as she was
inconstant in love. Her large handwriting, so elegant in its composition,
had covered pages and pages before she said: "I have a rendezvous at
eleven o'clock with Maitland. Ardea will be here at ten to talk of his
marriage. I have accounts from Finoli to examine. I hope that Gorka will
not come, too, this morning.".... Persons in whom the feeling of love is
very complete, but very physical, are thus. They give themselves and take
themselves back altogether. The Countess experienced no more pity than
fear in thinking of her betrayed lover. She had determined to say to him,
"I no longer love you," frankly, openly, and to offer him his choice
between a final rupture or a firm friendship.

The only anno