"If—if you were she," said Nicanor, and his voice shook, "would you have told him?"
"Oh, I should have told him!" Varia said, and her voice was low and strained. "I should have said—'I want you to love me! I want you to love me and stay with me always—'"
Nicanor bowed his face forward on his hands. Lady Varia, leaning forward, put her hand upon his shoulder.
"Were I that woman, I should have wanted to love him if he had been like that," she said, tremulously, yet very sweetly.
Nicanor straightened up and caught both her hands.
"Ah, no, my lady, you would not!" he said hoarsely. "You would have driven him from you and been angered beyond forgiveness. You would have hated and despised him, because—oh, don't you understand, it is the only thing you could have done! If she had said that—how could—how could he have left her?"
"But why did he leave her?" Varia asked. "Could he not have stayed always in the garden?"
Nicanor mastered himself with an effort.
"No," he said thickly. "Because he was only a man—and some day—it would be more than he could endure. If he saw that in her sweet innocence she did not realize the temptation she held out to him, he might—he might have done that which always after he must regret."
He raised her face with one hand and looked at her. Her eyes were closed, her red mouth quivered. He hesitated, his breath coming hard; then he bent his head and kissed her. As he took her in his arms, she shivered, crying softly: