‘It is this, then,’ said he, with an effort. ‘I am dying with my secret in my heart. I am dying, to carry away with me the love I am not to tell—my love for you, Kate.’
‘I am not Kate,’ was almost on her lips; but her struggle to keep silent was aided by that desire so strong in her nature—to follow out a situation of difficulty to the end. She did not love him, nor did she desire his love; but a strange sense of injury at hearing his profession of love for another shot a pang of intense suffering through her heart, and she lay back in her chair with a cold feeling of sickness like fainting. The overpowering passion of her nature was jealousy; and to share even the admiration of a salon, the ‘passing homage,’ as such deference is called, with another, was a something no effort of her generosity could compass.
Though she did not speak, she suffered her hand to remain unresistingly within his own. After a short pause he went on: ‘I thought yesterday that I was dying; and in my rambling intellect I thought I took leave of you; and do you know my last words—my last words, Kate?’
‘No; what were they?’
‘My last words were these: “Beware of the Greek; have no friendship with the Greek.”’
‘And why that warning?’ said she, in a low, faint voice.
‘She is not of us, Kate; none of her ways or thoughts are ours, nor would they suit us. She is subtle, and clever, and sly; and these only mislead those who lead simple lives.’
‘May it not be that you wrong her?’
‘I have tried to learn her nature.’
‘Not to love it?’