He seated himself opposite to her, and, putting down his palette, took up his canvas, and posing it on his knee, began drawing the first rough outline of his sketch in charcoal. She, meanwhile, leaning against heaped-up cushions of amber satin, remained silent.
"You are not a vain woman," he pursued, "or you would resent my description of your eyes. 'Greedy cruelty' is not a pretty expression, nor would it be considered complimentary by the majority of the fair sex. Yet, from my point of view, it is the highest flattery I can pay you, for I adore the eyes of savage animals, and the beautiful eye of the forest-beast is in your head,--diableresse charmante comme vous etes! I wonder what gives you such an insatiate love of vengeance?"
He looked up and saw her eyes glistening and narrowing at the corners, like the eyes of an angry snake.
"If I have such a feeling," she replied slowly, "it is probably a question of heritage."
"Ah! Your parents were perhaps barbaric in their notions of love and hatred?" he queried, lazily working at his charcoal sketch with growing admiration for its result.
"My parents came of a race of kings!" she answered. "All my ancestors were proud, and of a temper unknown to this petty day. They resented a wrong, they punished falsehood and treachery, and they took a life for a life. YOUR generation tolerates every sin known in the calendar with a smile and a shrug,--you have arrived at the end of your civilization, even to the denial of Deity and a future life."
"That is not the end of our civilization, Princess," said Gervase, working away intently, with eyes fixed on the canvas as he talked. "That is the triumphal apex, the glory, the culmination of everything that is great and supreme in manhood. In France, man now knows himself to be the only God; England--good, slow-pacing England--is approaching France in intelligence by degrees, and I rejoice to see that it is possible for a newspaper like the Agnostic to exist in London. Only the other day that excellent journal was discussing the possibility of teaching monkeys to read, and a witty writer, who adopts the nom de plume of 'Saladin,' very cleverly remarked 'that supposing monkeys were able to read the New Testament, they would still remain monkeys; in fact, they would probably be greater monkeys than ever.' The fact of such an expression being allowed to pass muster in once pious London is an excellent sign of the times and of our progress towards the pure Age of Reason. The name of Christ is no longer one to conjure with."