Again the Roman covered her with his eyes. “It is rather difficult to be the one and not the other. But I am perfectly sincere in saying that you are my idea of perfection.”
“Thanks, but, then, you are not mine.”
“And might one ask what yours is?”
Dreamily, with an air of innocence that was infinite, Aurelia looked at him. “You will think it childish of me, perhaps, but, like all young girls—like all young and inexperienced girls—I have an ideal. A mere maiden’s fancy, no doubt, and yet one which I cherish so. It is a vision which at times I have of a blind man, a deaf mute, a divine creature, invalid and octogenarian, who would not know what I did and would not care.”
Pausing, she dropped her eyes and sadly shook her head. “You will tell me that he don’t exist.”
“He might be manufactured,” Farnese cheerfully replied.
Then he, too, paused, drank of the wine before him, and, perhaps stimulated by it, whispered:
“Believe me, I feel as though I could cut my throat for you.”
Maliciously Aurelia looked up. “When a man does not feel that way he has no feeling at all. One might even say that he is quite heartless.”
Across the table, Tempest, turning again to Leilah, said: “Monsieur Barouffski is not here to-night.”