“Content!” Bertie burst out. “Content! You are mad, Faradeane!”
“I dare say,” was the calm, sad assent. “We are all more or less mad, Cherub; but I would rather be loved as a brother by Olivia—Miss Vanley—than as a husband by any other woman——”
He stopped abruptly, and Bertie stared at him.
“You can’t know what love—such love as mine—is!” he said.
Faradeane smiled.
“Perhaps not,” he said, grimly.
“I tell you—but what is the use of talking? Faradeane, my life is ruined. I don’t care what becomes of me. I staked everything upon her; I loved her as no man ever loved a woman before. I—oh, old fellow, tell me the truth! Is there no hope for me?”
Faradeane shook his head.
“Not a fragment,” he said, solemnly.
“If I—if I went to her myself——”