“My own thought,” she nodded.
“My regret will be for the American girl who is involved in all this. She is contracting to place her fortune and perhaps her happiness in the hands of Prince Danilo. But he, too, is contracting something.”
“Yes, a marriage; a very serious thing, you would say?”
“It is serious to an American girl, at least, madame. She knows, of course, of the prince’s alliance with you. To that she can have no possible reason to object—on the contrary; it has been an honourable and recognized arrangement. But when she marries him, she naturally expects that alliance to cease.”
“Ah, well,” said madame, pensively, “the prince is casting me off, is he not?”
“Yes; but are you casting him off? You have already told me that it is in your hands. You can keep him, if you choose—no doubt of that! You are the most fascinating woman, madame, that I have ever known, and you are very clever. You can do with a man what you will.”
“Even with you?” she asked, and looked into his eyes. “Ah, no—do not lie. You are an American—there is something in you, very deep down, which holds you back from the supreme follies we Latins commit so easily, and which even the English sometimes achieve. I have seen it—how often! You think it a merit; and because of it, at the bottom of your minds, you believe yourselves superior to us of Europe. Is it not so?”
“Perhaps.”
“But is it a merit? Is it not rather a cowardice?”
“I do not know, madame,” said Selden, humbly. “I suppose we have not the same urge.”