For an instant she glances at him keenly, while her breath comes and goes with painful quickness.
"You have no right to say so," she murmurs at last.
"No, of course not; I beg your pardon," he says apologetically. "It is your own secret."
"There is no secret," she declares nervously. "None."
"I have offended you. I should not have said that. You will forgive me?" he entreats, with agitation.
"You are quite forgiven;" and, as a token of the truth of her words, she leans a little further out of the window, and looks down at him with a face pale indeed, but full of an unutterable sweetness.
Her beauty conquers all his resolutions.
"Oh, Florence," he whispers in an impassioned tone, "if I only dare to tell you what—"
She starts and lays a finger on her lips, as though to enforce silence.
"Hush!" she says, in trembling accents. "You forget! The hour, the surroundings, have momentarily led you astray. I ought not to have spoken with you. Go! There is nothing you dare to tell me—there is nothing I would wish to hear. Remember your duty to another—and—good-night."