Bertie looked up at her.
"Not to you—you are happy, Lady Boisdale. What should you know of the temptations, the sorrows, the failures of life."
Ethel smiled.
"I may retort," she said, "in kind. What failures can the celebrated and popular Mr. Fairfax know?"
"The greatest failure a man can experience," said Bertie, leaning forward. "The failure of a hope, that at the best never deserved the word! Lady Boisdale, if you could read my heart at this moment you would see how bitter life is to me, how hollow the mockery of success which has fallen to me! Once I would have welcomed it, longed for it. Now it is as bitter Dead-Sea fruit which crumbles to dust beneath my touch. Once—nay, listen, I implore you to listen," for Ethel had half risen, pale and confused. "Once," he continued, very pale and earnest, and with a sad music in his voice. "When I was young enough to cherish such daring ambitions I dreamed that I could make a place for myself in this great struggling, writhing world, a place high enough to satisfy my ambition and feed my hope. I hoped to reach that place and to seat another there beside me, rather let me say, upon the throne itself while I knelt at the feet. This was a boy's dream, Lady Boisdale, and like most dreams only the bitterness of its unreality is left to me. I have made a place for myself, but it is empty and desolate. A desolate and bitter mockery because I dare not, I dare not hope that she whom I would have for my queen will ever deign to fill it. Lady Boisdale, could you see me as I really am, solitary, alone in the great world, bereft of my dearly-loved friend, bereft of my hope, you would pity me. Others might laugh me to scorn for a presumptuous idiot, but you, whose gentle heart I know so well, would pity me."
He took her hand as he spoke, his voice trembled.
A tear fell on the hand which held hers.
He looked up and saw that she was weeping.
In an instant his reserve, his determination to go no further was broken down.
He drew the hand to his lips and, looking up at her averted face, passionately said, in a voice trembling with love and supplication: