“You are experiencing such a moment now? You are fortunate!”
“I am, indeed. Perhaps Nero also had the woman he loved beside him.”
“That would be an explanation, truly!”
“But one thing I am quite certain he did not have,” I added in a lower tone, bending above her. “He did not have, warm against his heart, a flower which his love had kissed and thrown to him.”
“We all of us have our foolish impulses,” she responded tartly; but I saw the glow which deepened in her cheek.
“If that was a foolish impulse, mademoiselle,” I said, “I trust it will not be the last one. But it was not mere impulse—it came from your heart. One day you are going to love me.”
“Well, and what then?” she questioned quietly.
I confess I had no answer ready; what answer was it possible to give?
“I may add, M. de Tavernay,” she continued more severely, “that I consider your jests exceedingly ill-timed. Why talk of a future which will never exist?”
“But it will exist!” I protested.