“That cannot be,” replied Ezra earnestly. “She must see as we do, when she comes thoroughly to understand our motives in founding Perfection City. I look to you, Madame, to open her eyes to the truth.”
“Ah!” said Madame laconically, and then she added, after a moment’s pause, “I will ask you to do one thing for me.”
“Anything you ask I will do if it is in my power,” said Ezra.
“Do not tell Olive of your fall here, nor of the danger you were in, nor of my coming to find you.”
After a moment of puzzled silence Ezra said, “Of course your wishes are to me law. But may I ask why you make such a request?”
“Perhaps I am judging wrongly, but I am acting as if Olive had the same feelings as I should have. If I were in her place, I should hate it.”
“Why?” asked Ezra in surprise.
Madame rose up, her pale face illumined by the light of the fire.
“If I loved a man,” she said, beginning very quietly, but her voice gathered in intensity as she spoke. “If I loved a man, I could not bear it. To think that my love had failed him in his sorest need. He was lying stunned, helpless, within the clutch of deadly peril, and I went home unwarned, leaving him to his fate, all unconscious of the whole thing, while another woman—not I, but another woman—went to his rescue, another woman—not I—found him, saved him, drew him out of danger, while I walked heedlessly home. I should hate myself, I should hate—ah! I should hate to the verge of killing that other woman who had saved him. That is the way I should feel, if I loved.”
She concluded hastily, her voice dropping to a whisper. Ezra looked up at her in amazement.