“Dear Miss,” said the Frenchman, really concerned by her tragic demeanor, “say whatever pleases you. I am only here to listen.”
“You don’t really care for me. Oh, if you’d only tell the truth!”
“That is a strange remark,” he said, completely taken by surprise, and wondering what this extraordinary girl was going to say next.
“If I thought you really cared it would be different. Perhaps I couldn’t say it. I hate making people miserable, and yet so many people make me miserable.”
“Who makes you miserable, dear young lady?” he said, honestly touched.
“You,” she almost whispered. “You do. You don’t mean to, I know, for I think you’re kinder than lots of other men. But—but— Oh please, don’t keep on asking me to marry you. Don’t do it any more; that makes me miserable. Because I can’t do it. Truly, I can’t.”
Count de Lamolle became very grave. He drew himself up with an odd, stiff air, like a soldier.
“If a lady speaks this way to a man,” he said, “the man can only obey.”
Maud hung on his words. When she grasped their import, she suddenly moved toward him. There was something pathetic in her eagerness of gratitude.
“Oh, thanks! thanks! I knew you’d do it. It’s not you I object to. I like you better than any of the others. But”—she glanced over her shoulder into the lantern-lit brilliance of the Moorish room and dropped her voice—“there’s some one I like more.”