“And that would have been a pity, eh? No,” he added, with an argumentative gravity that touched and made her smile sadly. “You were never bad. It was always half my fault. I misjudged you, and you danced to my lugubrious piping.”
“This is the very madness of devotion! Oh, dear Alceste, with you, perhaps, with you I have not dealt so badly; but, but——” She walked on again, turning away her head.
“Ah, I must, I must remember.”
For a long time they were silent during the rounding of the whole garden, where the high walls grew dark against the sky, and the flowers, in the faint light, were ghostly.
“Michael,” she said at last, “I rebel sometimes against my own unhappiness. I want to crush it—I am afraid of it; but I am more afraid of being happy.”
“Why can’t they go together?” he asked.
“Ah! but can they?”
“They must, sooner or later. Then you won’t be afraid of either. Doesn’t this all mean,” he added, “that now I may tell you how much I love you?” and he stopped to look at her. Her face was like a white flower in the dusk. Far away, over long sweeps of thin purpling cloud, shone one star, faint and steady. He saw together her face, the sky, and the star.
“Oh!” said Camelia, “do you know me? Even now, do you know me? I’m not one bit good! I am still the horrid child who clamored for your love; my love for you the only good thing in me! You love me, all the same? You don’t mind? don’t expect anything? I want so much, but I will have nothing, not a kiss, not your hand holding mine,—there, let it go,—on false pretences.”