‘When your countrymen learn how they are deluded?’ said I, repeating her words. ‘Deluded in what?’
‘In the trick we played on them, my lord, to—to persuade them to disperse.’
I took a step towards her, and my voice shook as I said:
‘Was it all a trick, Phroso?’ For at this moment I set above everything else in the world a fresh assurance of her love. I would force it from her sooner than not have it.
She answered me with questioning eyes and a sad little smile.
‘Are we then betrothed?’ she said, in mournful mockery.
I was close by her now. I did not touch her, but I bent a little, and my face was near hers.
‘Was it a trick to-day, and a trick on St Tryphon’s day also?’ I asked.
She gave one startled glance at my face, and then her eyes dropped to the ground. She made no answer to my question.
‘Was it all a trick, Phroso?’ I asked in entreaty, in urgency, in the wild longing to hear her love declared once, here, to me alone, where nobody could hear, nobody impair its sweet secrecy.