"If I married you now it would not be worth my while to return to Austria.… You see, I'd be an American. I'd no longer be Gräfin Zattiany.… I could accomplish nothing.… It is the strangest thing in the world, but I never had thought of changing my name——"
"Until Hohenhauer reminded you, I suppose. Well, I could have told you that myself. I had counted on it, if you want to know the truth."
"Ah! Then you counted on that to—to——"
"To have you altogether. Yes." And then he added hastily: "But up there—you must believe this—I never gave it a thought—after—after you promised to marry me at once."
He doubted if she had listened to this protest that there had been an hour when in the complete baring of his soul he had been above plotting and subterfuge. She was still looking out of the window. He saw her long upward-curving nostril grow rigid.
But she said quietly: "And what do you think you would have done with me, Lee, after we were on the plane of common mortals once more? Transports do not last for ever, you know, and we are not heedless young things with no thought of the future. You have acknowledged there is no place for me here, and there would be no place for me in Europe if I married you. Do you wonder that I came away to think, after Prince Hohenhauer—who, remember, knows me far better than you do—pointed out the inexorable truth? What would you do with me, Lee?"
He stared out of the window in his turn—at the tender greens of the Park. He could hear the birds singing. Spring! The chill of winter was in the car, and it emanated from the woman beside him.
"I don't know," he said miserably. "I only know that I love you and would take any chances."
"But, you see, although it is my misfortune to love you, I recognize that there is a long generation between us. I thought I had spanned it, but—do you realize that we have literally nothing to give each other but love? That we are as unlike——"
"Oh, yes, I realized all that the night you left. But I don't care. Cannot you trust me?"