"It is permitted that one smokes?" he inquired.
"It is always permitted to you," was the gracious reply.
"One of my privileges," he remarked, as he blew out the match; "in fact, almost my only privilege."
She glanced up, but her eyes fell before his.
"Is that quite fair?"
"I should be grieved to do anything or to say anything to you that was not entirely fair."
She crushed one of the roses to pieces suddenly in her hands and shook the petals from her long, nervous fingers.
"To-day," she said, "this afternoon—now—you have come to me with something in your mind, something you wish to say, something you are not sure how to say. That is, you see, what Henri Graillot calls my intuition. Even you, who keep all your feelings under a mask, can conceal very little from me."
"My present feelings," the prince declared, "I do not wish to conceal. I would like you to know them. But as words are sometimes clumsy, I would like, if it were possible, to let you see into my heart, or, in these days, shall I not say my consciousness? I should feel, then, that without fear of misunderstanding you would know certain things which I would like you to know."
She came over and seated herself by his side on the divan. She even laid her hand upon his arm.