'You are right,' he said. 'I congratulate you on your decision. You were talking of dying just now. You will live long enough to know how much congratulation you merit for having to-day refused to give yourself to a traitor and a villain.'
'A traitor—no, no,' she said, holding out her hand.
'No,' he said, 'I am not worthy. Some day you will know that I ought never to have touched that hand of yours. Good-bye.'
And the door shut behind him, and Clare was left standing in the middle of the room with her eyes widely opened, and her hand still outstretched. She stood there till she heard the front door closed, and then sank into a chair. She didn't want to go on making notes about 'The Prophetic Vision' any more.
The interview had not been a pleasant one, and it was not pleasant to think over. One of the least pleasant things in this world is a granted wish, granted after it has ceased to be wished. And Clare could not forget that she had desired to win this man's admiration, at least. She could not forget that he had saved her father's life—that he had been the first to speak to her of many things once unknown or unconsidered, but now a part of her very life—and she could not forget that when she had first thought of the possibility of his asking her to marry him she had not meant to refuse him. There had been much about him to attract her, and if she had never met Petrovitch she might have given Litvinoff, even now, a different answer. But in Petrovitch she found all the qualities that had fascinated her in Litvinoff, and all on a larger scale, and with a finer development. Litvinoff now seemed to her like a dissolving view of Petrovitch seen through the wrong end of a telescope. He lacked the definiteness of outline, the depth of tone, the intense reality of the other man. Perhaps he seemed more brilliant and dashing; but Hirsch's story had shown what Petrovitch was. Added to all this was one significant fact. She had admired in Litvinoff one quality or another, and had desired to attract him. To Petrovitch she herself had been attracted, not by any specific quality or qualities, but by himself—by the man as he was—and this attraction grew stronger with each meeting.
A fortnight had now passed since the second time she had seen him, and somehow or other she had seen him very often in that time. She knew well enough that neither Litvinoff nor Petrovitch had come to Marlborough Villa to see its mistress. And she had been sufficiently certain about the Count's motives for his visit, but could she be certain about the motive which brought the elder man there so constantly? Of any effort to make him care for her she was not guilty. In her new frame of mind she would have felt any such attempt to be degrading, alike to herself and to him. And though she knew he came to see her, she could not be sure why he came. Was his evident interest in her only the interest of an apostle in a convert? A certain humility had sprung up in her, along with many other flowers of the heart, and she did not admit to herself that there was a chance of his interest being of another nature. Only, she thought, it would be the highest honour in the world and the deepest happiness to be the woman whom he loved. Not the less because she knew well enough that the woman he loved would hold the second place in his heart, and that he would not wish to hold the first place in hers. That, for both of them, must be filled by the goddess whom Litvinoff had once said he worshipped, and whom he had abjured and abandoned for her sake. She thought of this without a single thrill of gratified pride.
Miss Stanley sat silent for half an hour, and in that time got through more thinking than we could record if we wrote steadily for half a year. At the end of that time Miss Quaid came home.
'I hear Count Litvinoff has been here,' she said, when she entered the study. 'What is it to be? Am I to have a Countess Litvinoff for a friend?'
'No,' said Clare, rising and shaking off her reverie; I shall never be anything to Count Litvinoff.'
Which was, perhaps, a too hasty conclusion.