“Yes,” she muttered to herself, “and Catrina is plain—­terribly plain.”

Thereupon she fell asleep.

De Chauxville had a good memory, and was, moreover, a good and capable liar.  So Catrina did not find out that he knew nothing whatever of music.  He watched the plain face as the music rose and fell, himself impervious to its transcendent tones.  With practised cunning he waited until Catrina was almost intoxicated with music—­an intoxication to which all great musicians are liable.

“Ah!” he said.  “I envy you your power.  With music like that one can almost imagine that life is what one would wish it to be.”

She did not answer, but she wandered off into another air—­a slumber song.

“The Schlummerlied,” said De Chauxville softly.  “It almost has the power to send a sorrow to sleep.”

This time she answered him—­possibly because he had not looked at her.

“Such never sleep,” she said.

“Do you know that, too?” he asked, not in a tone that wanted reply.

She made no answer.

“I am sorry,” he went on.  “For me it is different, I am a man.  I have man’s work to do.  I can occupy myself with ambition.  At all events, I have a man’s privilege of nursing revenge.”

He saw her eyes light up, her breast heave with a sudden sigh.  Something like a smile wavered for a moment beneath his waxed mustache.

Catrina’s fingers, supple and strong, struck in great chords the air of a gloomy march from the half-forgotten muse of some monastic composer.  While she played, Claude de Chauxville proceeded with his delicate touch to play on the hidden chords of an untamed heart.

“A man’s privilege,” he repeated musingly.

“Need it be such?” she asked.

For the first time his eyes met hers.

“Not necessarily,” he answered, and her eyes dropped before his narrow gaze.

He sat back in his chair, content for the moment with the progress he had made.  He glanced at the countess.  He was too experienced a man to be tricked.  The countess was really asleep.  Her cap was on one side, her mouth open.  A woman who is pretending to sleep usually does so in becoming attitudes.

De Chauxville did not speak again for some minutes.  He sat back in his chair, leaning his forehead on his hand, while he peeped through his slim fingers.  He could almost read the girl’s thoughts as she put them into music.

“She does not hate him yet,” he was reflecting.  “But she needs only to see him with Etta a few times and she will come to it.”

The girl played on, throwing all the pain in her passionate, untamed heart into the music.  She knew nothing of the world; for half of its temptations, its wiles, its wickednesses were closed to her by the plain face that God had given her.  For beautiful women see the worst side of human nature—­they usually deal with the worst of men.  Catrina was an easy tool in the hands of such as Claude de Chauxville; for he had dealt with women and that which is evil in women all his life, and the only mistakes he ever made were those characteristic errors of omission attaching to a persistent ignorance of the innate good in human nature.  It is this same innate good that upsets the calculations of most villains.