The Duc admired some majolica she had purchased.

She said she began to think that majolica was a false taste; the
metallic lustre was fine, but how clumsy the forms! one might be led
astray by too great love of old work.

The Duc praised a magnificent Sevres panel, just painted by Riocreux and
Goupil, and given to her by Princess Olga on the New Year.

She said it was well done, but what charm was there in it? All their
modern iron and zinc colours, and hydrate of aluminum, and oxide of
chromium, and purple of Cassius, and all the rest of it, never gave
one-tenth the charm of those old painters who had only green greys and
dull blues and tawny yellows, and never could get any kind of red
whatever; Olga had meant to please her, but she, for her part, would
much sooner have had a little panel of Abruzzi, with all the holes and
defects in the pottery, and a brown contadina for a Madonna; there was
some interest in that,--there was no interest in that gorgeous landscape
and those brilliant hunting figures.

The Duc bore all the contradictions with imperturbable serenity and
urbanity, smiled to himself, and bowed himself out in perfect
good-humour.

"Tout va bien," he thought to himself; "Miladi must be very much in love
to be so cross."

The Duc's personal experience amongst ladies had made him of opinion
that love did not improve the temper.

* * *

"In love!" she echoed, with less languor and more of impetuosity than
she had ever displayed, "are you ever in love, any of you, ever? You
have senses and vanity and an inordinate fear of not being in the
fashion--and so you take your lovers as you drink your stimulants and
wear your wigs and tie your skirts back--because everybody else does it,
and not to do it is to be odd, or prudish, or something you would hate
to be called. Love! it is an unknown thing to you all. You have a sort
of miserable hectic passion, perhaps, that is a drug you take as you
take chlorodyne--just to excite you and make your jaded nerves a little
alive again, and yet you are such cowards that you have not even the
courage of passion, but label your drug Friendship, and beg Society to
observe that you only keep it for family uses like arnica or like
glycerine. You want notoriety; you want to indulge your fancies, and yet
keep your place in the world. You like to drag a young man about by a
chain, as if he were the dancing monkey that you depended upon for
subsistence. You