“I will tell you why, Helga. There are limits even to the recklessness of your self-slander. I have done you more wrong than I deemed. You had caught yourself in your own toils and come to—to love the Emperor.”
I spoke slowly and deliberately, and as the words left my lips she started as if to make some indignant retort; but checked herself and leant back in her seat, pale and set, her brows wrinkled in intensely earnest thought. I watched her closely, and presently a flush began to spread over her cheeks, and she said slowly, without looking at me—
“Why should I deny it? You wish the truth and shall have it.”
Then she sat up again and bent forward toward me.
“Yes, I love you—if it be love to long to do what you ask, and yet be strong enough to put all thought of doing it out of my heart. I do love you, I believe, and yet I am resolved never to look on your face again. I hate you for the deceit you practised, which has ruined everything for me at the very moment when all seemed to be won. And yet”—her voice and eyes softened and she sighed—“and yet I—I am glad you came.”
“I ask no more than that—at present. Except leave to ask for more when I have undone the mischief I have caused. You will grant that?”
“No—no, a hundred times no.”
“You may make it a million. It will not alter my resolve.”
She laughed with delicious softness.
“Now, you know why I will not have your help.”