But my lips refused to form the words; my heart turned faint——
“Oh,” she said, in a low voice. “I understand;” and she played for a moment with the rose at her bosom. “You mean, then, that it is I who have wrought this change in you?”
“Yes,” I assented; and caught my breath to choke back the sob which rose in my throat.
She looked at me with a little frown, which changed in an instant to an arch smile.
“Come,” she said, “confess that you are easily impressed, and that you will forget as easily.”
“I shall never forget!”
“Remember the proverb—‘That which flames at a touch dies at a breath.’”
“I care nothing for proverbs. I know my own heart.”
“But consider, my friend;” and she leaned forward in her earnestness until she almost touched me, until the sweet glow of her body penetrated to me. “You have known me only a few hours. I am the first woman you have met on riding forth into the world. You mistake a goose for a swan. I assure you that there are many women beside whom you would not give me a second glance. Indeed, it is very possible that your betrothed may be one of them. So you will soon recover from this madness; in a day or two it will have quite passed away. The path of honor leads you to Poitiers and there you will find happiness as well. In time you will come to wonder at this night’s emotion, and to laugh at it. You will look back and you will say to yourself, ‘What a fool I was!’”
“It is true,” I said slowly, “that I may be a fool in desiring what I can never hope to possess; but at least, mademoiselle, do me the justice to believe that I shall never cease to desire it. I do not know how to tell you, for I have no skill in the phrases of love. I only know that you have touched in me a chord which will never cease to beat until the heart itself is still. It is not your beauty, though you are very beautiful; it is not the tone of your voice, though that is very sweet; it is not your smile, though that drives me to madness. It is something beyond and behind all that; it is something which for want of a better name I call your soul—that which looks out of your eyes so clear and pure that I tremble before it, knowing my own unworthiness. It is your soul that I love, mademoiselle, and no lapse of time, no chance of fortune—nothing in earth or heaven—can alter that love one atom.”