She spoke with a smiling vivacity, but she set a delicate little trifle of lace and cambric to her eyes, and then looked up and smiled again.
‘You do not wish,’ he asked, ‘that we should see much of each other?’ His face was very gloomy.
‘I mean,’ she said gently, laying her hand upon his shoulder, and looking into his mournful eyes, ‘that we should be discreet I do not mean that at all as regards the opinion of others, for there I can trust myself and you without a fear. I mean with respect to ourselves. It will not be well for your own happiness that we should meet often as we are meeting now.’
She rose, and moved away from him a little, standing with the fingers of her hands interlaced, and the palms downward. This is a very pleasing sort of attitude when adopted by the right kind of person. Taken in conjunction with a pensive, sidelong droop of the head, it will yield an expression of gently sorrowing coy confidence when employed by a competent artist.
‘You will promise me,’ said the Baroness, with a voice not wholly steady, ‘that you will never repeat to me what I am going to tell you.’
‘You may command me anything,’ Paul answered. ‘I promise.’
‘It will not be well,’ she went on, repeating the words she had spoken so little a while before, ‘for your own happiness that we should meet often as we are meeting now. Nor will it be well for mine, Paul. That is why I have hesitated so long before I have dared to permit you to see me—before I have dared to permit myself to see you. I am strong enough now to trust myself, and I put faith, too, in your friendship and your chivalry. You will not add to my unhappiness?’
Paul also had left his seat. He stood almost at her shoulder. He was near enough to have taken her in his arms.
‘Gertrude,’ he murmured, ‘if anything could add to what I feel for you, this would do it. You shall have my tenderest adoration, my constant obedience.’
She turned her head slowly, as if she did it almost against her will. She raised her eyes and looked at him with a strange steadfastness. She spoke in a soft, half-whisper.