"The awakening was violent. He was an Austrian, with an important place in the Government; he came to Belgrade on a private mission. He was a very great person in many ways, and I think I really loved him, for he seemed to me entirely worthy of it. He certainly was mad enough about me for a time--for a year, to be exact. When he returned to Vienna it was not difficult for me to find an excuse to go also. Although Zattiany was a Hungarian, he never visited his Hungarian estates except for the boar hunting, and spent his time when on leave, or between appointments, in Vienna, where he had inherited a palace--I must tell you that the city residence of a nobleman in the Dual Empire was always called a palace, however much it might look like a house. "I shall always remember this man with a certain pleasure and respect, for he is the only man who ever made me suffer. A woman forgets the lovers she has dismissed as quickly as possible. Their memory is hateful to her, like the memory of all mistakes. But this man made me suffer horribly. (He married a young girl, out of duty to his House, and unexpectedly fell in love with her.) Therefore, although I recovered, and completely, still do I sometimes dwell with a certain cynical pleasure on the memory of him----" "Have you never seen him since?" asked Clavering sharply. He had returned to his chair. "How long ago was that?" "Quite sixteen years ago. I did not visit Vienna again for several years; in fact, not until after my husband's death, when I returned there to live. But by that time I had lost both youth and beauty. His wife had died, but left him an heir, and he showed no disposition to marry again; certainly he was as indifferent to me as I to him. We often met, and as he respected my mind and my knowledge of European affairs, we talked politics together, and he sometimes asked my advice. "But to go back. After that was over I determined to put love definitely out of my life. I believed then and finally that I had not the gift of inspiring love; nor would I ever risk humiliation and suffering again. I played the great game of life and politics. I was still beautiful--for a few years--I had an increasingly great position, all the advantages, obvious and subtle, that money could procure. My maid was very clever. My gowns, as time went on, were of a magnificent simplicity; all frou-frous were renounced. I had no mind to invite the valuation I heard applied to certain American women in Paris: 'elderly and dressy.'"