She glanced out of the window into the black void beneath.
"I—I am not afraid to die, Herr Goritz," she said.
He caught the meaning of her glance and her poise by the window-ledge, and their significance sobered him instantly. He drew back from her two or three paces and leaned heavily against an oaken chair.
"Am I so repellent to you as that?" he whispered.
"My lips—are mine," she said proudly. "I give them willingly or not at all."
His gaze flickered and fell before the high resolve that he read in her face. And her courage enthralled him.
"Herr Gott!" he muttered, "you have never been so beautiful as now, Marishka!"
She did not reply or move, but only watched him steadily.
He paced the floor stiffly, his hands behind him, struggling for his self-control. And the better instinct in him, the part of him that had made life possible for Marishka at Schloss Szolnok, was slowly triumphant.
"A kiss means much or little," he said quietly at last. "To me, the consecration of a love which has leaped the bounds of mere platitude. A woman of your training perhaps cannot grasp the honesty of my unconvention. I have meant you no harm. But that you should have misunderstood—!"