"You could not love," affirmed she. "You have given yourself out little by little—here and there. You have really nothing left to give."
A man of less vision, of slower mind would have been able to protest. But Boris instantly saw what she meant, felt the truth in her verdict. "Nothing left to give?" he repeated. "Do you think so?"
"I know it," replied she.
There are some words that sound like the tolling of the bells of fate; those words of hers sounded thus to him. "Nothing left to give," he repeated. Had he indeed wasted his whole self upon trifles? Had he lit his lamps so long before the feast that now, with the bride come, they were quite burned out? He looked at her and, like the vague yet vivid visions music shows us and snatches away before we have seen more than just that they were there, he caught a haunting glimpse of the beauty supernal which he loved and longed for, but with his tired, blunted senses could not hope to realize or attain.... The blasphemer's fate!—to kiss the dust before the god he had reviled.... He burst out laughing, his hearty, sensuous, infectious laughter. "I'm getting senile," said he. With a flash of angrily reluctant awe, "Or rather, you have bewitched me." He got ready to depart. "So, my lady of joy and pain, you do not love me—yet?" he inquired jestingly.
She shook her head with a smile which the gleam of her eyes from their narrow lids and the sweeping lashes made coquettish. "Not yet," replied she, in his own tone.
"Well, don't try. Love doesn't come for must. To-morrow? Yes. A new day, a new deal."
They shook hands warmly, looked at each other with laughing eyes, no shadow of seriousness either in him or in her. "You are the first woman I ever loved," said he. "And you shall be the last. I do not like this love, now that I am acquainted with it." The sunlight pouring upon his head made him beautiful like a Bacchus, with color and life glittering in his crisp, reddish hair and virile, close-cropped beard. "I do not feel safe when my soul's center of gravity is in another person." He kissed her hand. "Till to-morrow."
She was smiling, coloring, trying to hide the smile; but he could not tell whether it was because she was more moved than she cared to have him see, or merely because his curious but highly effective form of adoration pleased her vanity and she did not wish him to see it. "To-morrow," echoed she.
He bowed himself out, still smiling, as if once beyond the door he might burst into laughter at himself or at her—or might wearily drop his merry mask. Her last look that he saw was covertly inquiring, doubtful—as if she might be wondering, Is he in earnest, does he really care, or was he only imagining love and exaggerating the fancy to amuse himself and me?
Outside the door, he did drop his mask of comedy to reveal a face not without the tragic touch in its somberness. "Does she care?" he muttered. And he answered himself, "After all my experience! ... Experience! It simply puts hope on its mettle. Do I not know that if she loved she would not hesitate? And yet— Hope! You Jack-o'-lantern, luring man deeper and deeper into the slough of despond. I know you for the trickster you are, Hope. But, lead on!"