It was hard for me, but--what would you?
Life was hard. It might have been that I would have found life hard with
Her Highness. What was to be, would be. I must write to my friends. It
was not in her power to do anything for me. Her Highness had left no
instructions. These things happened. Well! one made the best of them.
There was nothing more to say.
So we said nothing more, and the woman moved away silently, as if to
funeral music, to prepare for her journey to Russia. I--went down to
luncheon.
One always does go down to luncheon while one is still inclined to keep
up appearances before oneself; but the restaurant was large and terribly
magnificent, with a violent rose-coloured carpet, and curtains which
made me, in my frightened pallor, with my pale yellow hair and my gray
travelling dress, feel like a poor little underground celery-stalk flung
into a sunlit strawberry-bed, amid a great humming of bees.
The vast rosy sea was thickly dotted with many small table-islands that
glittered appetizingly with silver and glass; but I could not have
afforded to acknowledge an appetite even if I'd had one.
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