“We don’t want to keep you a prisoner, or detain you against your will,” he said, with regard to the incident of the morning, “but if you’ll stay with us a little longer, I think we can convince you of our good intentions.”
“Who’s—we?”
She shot the question at him, as she lay back in her chair, the red book in her lap. He smiled inwardly at the ready pertinence with which she went to a point he didn’t care to discuss.
“Well, then, suppose I said—I? That’ll do, won’t it?”
She shot another question, her flaming eyes half veiled. “How long would you want me to stay?”
“Suppose we didn’t fix a time? Suppose we just left it—like that?”
The question rose to her lips: “But in the end I’m to go?” only, on second thoughts she repressed it. She preferred that the situation should be left “like that,” since it meant that she was not at once to be separated from the prince. The fact that she was legally the prince’s wife had as little reality to her as to him. Could she have had what she yearned for law or no law would have been the same to her. But 210 since she couldn’t have that, it was much that he should come like this and sit with her by the fire in the evening.
He leaned forward and took the book from her lap. “What are you reading? Oh, this! I haven’t looked at it for years.” He glanced at the title. “The Little Mermaid! That used to be my favorite. It still is. When I was in Copenhagen I went to see the little bronze mermaid sitting on a rock on the shore. It’s a memorial to Hans Andersen. She’s quite startling for a minute—till you know what it is. Where are you at?”
Pointing out the line at which she had stopped her hand touched his, but all the consciousness of the accident was on her side. He seemed to notice nothing, beginning to read aloud to her, with no suspicion that sentiment existed.
“Many an evening and morning she rose to the place where she had left the prince. She watched the fruits in the garden ripen and fall; she saw the snow melt from the high mountains; but the prince she never saw, and she came home sadder than ever. Her one consolation was to sit in her little garden, with her arms clasped round the marble statue which was like the prince––”