“You know very well,” she said, “that you are speaking of impossible things!”
“Things that were impossible, Wilhelmina,” he said. “Suppose I take Jean le Roi off your hands? Suppose I promise to send him back to his own country like a rat to his hole? Suppose I promise that your marriage shall be annulled without a line in the newspapers, without a single vestige of publicity?”
“You cannot do it,” she murmured eagerly.
“You want your freedom, then?” he asked.
“Yes! I want my freedom,” she answered. “I have a right to it, haven’t I?”
“And I,” he said slowly, “want you!”
There was a short pause. Through the palms came the faint wailing of a violin, the crash of pianoforte chords, the clear soft notes of a singer. Wilhelmina felt her eyes fill with tears. She was overwrought, and there were new things, things that were strange to her, in the worn, lined face of the man who was bending towards her.
“Wilhelmina,” he said softly, “life, our life, does its best to strangle the emotions. One feels that one does best with a pulse which has forgotten how to quicken, and a heart which beats to the will of its owner. But the most hardened of us come to grief sometimes. I am afraid that I have come—very much to grief!”
“I am sorry,” she said quietly.
He drew away and his face became like marble.