"It is as I said," she went on; "you were married!"
"Well, then, call it so—married after my fashion of marriage; the fashion of which I told you, of a cabin and a bed of husks. As to what you have said, I forget it, I have not heard it. Your sort could have no heart beat for one like me. 'Tis men like myself are slaves to women such as you. You could never have cared for me, and never did. What you loved, Madam, was only what you had lost, was only what you saw in this country—was only what this country means! Your past life, of course, I do not know."
"Sometime," she murmured, "I will tell you."
"Whatever it was, Madam, you have been a brilliant woman, a power in affairs. Yes, and an enigma, and to none more than to yourself. You show that now. You only loved what Elisabeth loved. As woman, then, you were born for the first time, touched by that throb of her heart, not your own. `Twas mere accident I was there to feel that throb, as sweet as it was innocent. You were not woman yet, you were but a child. You had not then chosen. You have yet to choose. It was Love that you loved! Perhaps, after all, it was America you loved. You began to see, as you say, a wider and a sweeter world than you had known."
She nodded now, endeavoring to smile.
"Gentilhomme!" I heard her murmur.
"So then I go on, Madam, and say we are the same. I am the agent of one idea, you of another. I ask you once more to choose. I know how you will choose."
She went on, musing to herself. "Yes, there is a gulf between male and female, after all. As though what he said could be true! Listen!" She spoke up more sharply. "If results came as you liked, what difference would the motives make?"
"How do you mean?"
"Only this, Monsieur, that I am not so lofty as you think. I might do something. If so, 'twould need to be through some motive wholly sufficient to myself."