Female Led Relationships

She did not go to bed, but merely threw off her ball-dress and undid
her hair; then she ordered me to build a fire, and she sat by the
fire-place, and stared into the flames.

“Do you need me any longer, mistress?” I asked, my voice failed me
at the last word.

Wanda shook her head.

I left the room, passed through the gallery, and sat down on one of
the steps, leading from there down into the garden. A gentle north
wind brought a fresh, damp coolness from the Arno, the green hills
extended into the distance in a rosy mist, a golden haze hovered over
the city, over the round cupola of the Duomo.

A few stars still tremble in the pale-blue sky.

I tore open my coat, and pressed my burning forehead against the
marble. Everything that had happened so far seemed to me a mere
child’s play; but now things were beginning to be serious, terribly
serious.

I anticipated a catastrophe, I visualized it, I could lay hold of it
with my hands, but I lacked the courage to meet it. My strength was
broken. And if I am honest with myself, neither the pains and
sufferings that threatened me, not the humiliations that impended,
were the thing that frightened me.

I merely felt a fear, the fear of losing her whom I loved with a
sort of fanatical devotion; but it was so overwhelming, so crushing
that I suddenly began to sob like a child.

The drawing-room has already thinned out to a marked degree, but she
apparently has no thought of leaving.

Morning is already peering through the blinds.

At last I hear the rustling of her heavy gown which flows along
behind her like green waves. She advances step by step, engaged in
conversation with him.

I hardly exist for her any longer; she doesn’t even trouble to give
me an order.

“The cloak for madame,” he commands. He, of course, doesn’t think of
looking after her himself.

While I put her furs about her, he stands to one side with his arms
crossed. While I am on my knees putting on her fur over-shoes, she
lightly supports herself with her hand on his shoulder. She asks:

“And what about the lioness?”

“When the lion whom she has chosen and with whom she lives is
attacked by another,” the Greek went on with his narrative, “the
lioness quietly lies down and watches the battle. Even if her mate
is worsted she does not go to his aid. She looks on indifferently as
he bleeds to death under his opponent’s claws, and follows the victor,
the stronger–that is the female’s nature.”

At this moment my lioness looked quickly and curiously at me.

It made me shudder, though I didn’t know why–and the red dawn
immerses me and her and him in blood.

All night long I waited in the ante-room, raving as in a fever.
Strange images hovered past my inner eye. I saw their meeting–their
long exchange of looks. I saw her float through the hall in his arms,
drunken, lying with half-closed lids against his breast. I saw him
in the holy of holies of love, lying on the ottoman, not as slave,
but as master, and she at his feet. On my knees I served them, the
tea-tray faltering in my hands, and I saw him reach for the whip.
But now the servants are talking about him.

He is a man who is like a woman; he knows that he is beautiful, and
he acts accordingly. He changes his clothes four or five times a day,
like a vain courtesan.

In Paris he appeared first in woman’s dress, and the men assailed
him with love-letters. An Italian singer, famous equally for his art
and his passionate intensity, even invaded his home, and lying on his
knees before him threatened to commit suicide if he wouldn’t be his.

“I am sorry,” he replied, smiling, “I should like to do you the
favor, but you will have to carry out your threat, for I am a man.”

He has arrived.

In his black velvet coat extravagantly trimmed with sable, he is a
beautiful, haughty despot who plays with the lives and souls of men.
He stands in the ante-room, looking around proudly, and his eyes rest
on me for an uncomfortably long time.

Under his icy glance I am again seized by a mortal fear. I have a
presentiment that this man can enchain her, captivate her, subjugate
her, and I feel inferior in contrast with his savage masculinity; I
am filled with envy, with jealousy.

I feel that I am a queer weakly creature of brains, merely! And what
is most humiliating, I want to hate him, but I can’t. Why is that
among all the host of servants he has chosen me.

With an inimitably aristocratic nod of the head he calls me over to
him, and I–I obey his call–against my own will.

“Take my furs,” he quickly commands.

My entire body trembles with resentment, but I obey, abjectly like
a slave.

To-day she is attending the ball at the Greek ambassador’s. Does she
know, that she will meet him there?

At any rate she dressed, as if she did. A heavy sea-green silk dress
plastically encloses her divine form, leaving the bust and arms bare.
In her hair, which is done into a single flaming knot, a white water-
lily blossoms; from it the leaves of reeds interwoven with a few
loose strands fall down toward her neck. There no longer is any trace
of agitation or trembling feverishness in her being. She is calm, so
calm, that I feel my blood congealing and my heart growing cold under
her glance. Slowly, with a weary, indolent majesty, she ascends the
marble staircase, lets her precious wrap slide off, and listlessly
enters the hall, where the smoke of a hundred candles has formed a
silvery mist.

For a few moments my eyes follow her in a daze, then I pick up her
furs, which without my being aware, had slipped from my hands. They
are still warm from her shoulders.

I kiss the spot, and my eyes fill with tears.

“You can wait down in the lobby,” she said when I had placed the
opera-glasses and the programme on the edge of her box and adjusted
the footstool.

I am standing there and had to lean against the wall for support so
as not to fall down with envy and rage–no, rage isn’t the right
word; it was a mortal fear.

I saw her in her box dressed in blue moire, with a huge ermine cloak
about her bare shoulders; he sat opposite. I saw them devour each
other with their eyes. For both of them the stage, Goldoni’s Pamela,
Salvini, Marini, the public, even the entire world, were non-existant
to-night. And I–what was I at that moment?–

Before evening fell, I had the desired information.

Wanda was still fully dressed when I returned. She reclined on the
ottoman, her face buried in her hands, her hair in a wild tangle,
like the red mane of a lioness.

“What is his name?” she asked, uncanny calm.

“Alexis Papadopolis.”

“A Greek, then,”

I nodded.

“He is very young?”

“Scarcely older than you. They say he was educated in Paris, and
that he is an atheist. He fought against the Turks in Candia, and is
said to have distinguished himself there no less by his race-hatred
and cruelty, than by his bravery.”

“All in all, then, a man,” she cried with sparkling eyes.

“At present he is living in Florence,” I continued, “he is said to
be tremendously rich–”

“I didn’t ask you about that,” she interrupted quickly and sharply.
“The man is dangerous. Aren’t you afraid of him? I am afraid of him.
Has he a wife?”

“No.”

“A mistress?”

“No.”

“What theaters does he attend?”

“To-night he will be at the Nicolini Theater, where Virginia Marini
and Salvini are acting; they are the greatest living artists in
Italy, perhaps in Europe.

“See that you get a box–and be quick about it!” she commanded.

“But, mistress–”

“Do you want a taste of the whip?”