She dropped her eyes. “Was it not natural that I should think so?” she asked.
“Perhaps it was natural,” he answered, “but you were mistaken. My only sentiment with regard to that past folly is one of sincerest thankfulness for my escape. The last time we sat like this together—have you forgotten the evening in the orange grove?—I told you that my fancy for Fanny Berrien was dead, killed by her duplicity to me and her selfishness toward you. I may have been a little melodramatic, but I meant exactly what I said. From that day to this her memory has not cost me a pang. As for Mrs. Meredith, she is a very pretty and amusing person, who acted altogether according to her kind, and to whom for her conduct toward myself I bear no malice whatever. On the contrary, my sentiment toward her is one of lively gratitude—although I have never forgiven her for her conduct toward you.”
Aimée had lifted her eyes now, and was looking at him again very steadily. It was as if she were deciding in her own mind the question of his sincerity. Then she said, with her old simplicity and directness:
“But why do you wish to tell this to me?”
“Because,” he answered, “whether I go or whether I stay, I do not wish you to regard me as the victim of a hopeless passion for the wife of Mr. Meredith.”
“I should scarcely have thought that,” she answered; “but it was surely natural to fancy that you might remember—with pain—”
“Oh, no; it is no matter for pain,” he said, as she hesitated—“only for a light-comedy smile and sigh. Fancies of that sort come and go like dreams. One must know many of them before one learns what love really is.”
She turned her dark, meditative eyes away from him. On one side was the interior of the marvelous old church, gleaming with marbles and precious stones; on the other the sunshiny Piazza, with its graceful arcades and flocks of sheeny pigeons. She looked toward the last as she said:
“I do not think I like such an idea.”
“You?” he said, quickly. “No; how could you like it? It is not meant to apply to natures like yours.”