Alexandra drew her breath in and her brows together. She had hardly expected such frankness, well as she knew the methods of diplomacy. But she answered readily: “A man does not sacrifice his honor and his friendship, and place the world at the feet of the adored object with no hope of reward. Do you mean to say that you purpose to dazzle my brother with the hope of ultimate success?”
“No; it will not be long before we understand each other too completely for that!”
“What do you mean?”
A deep blush suffused Ranata’s face, and she stood up suddenly. “I believe I shall love your brother,” she said distinctly. “I believe it is my destiny as surely as it is that I was born to be useful to my house. I have never seen another man who has touched—has interested me at all. There has never been any hope in my heart that I should not love sooner or later—perhaps no wish. Would you take this from me—from him? Cannot you understand what a great love may mean to natures like mine and your brother’s—that the earthly consummation of love has nothing to do with its immortal part? Your brother did not receive your letter asking him to come here. We met by the merest accident—apparently!—and he interested me quite independently of my ambitions, my purpose. If ambition and purpose had never been born I should implore you as I do now to let him remain near me as long as possible. I shall not relax in my determination to win him from the Emperor of Germany, but there is so much in my soul to give! I shall give it to him—and I believe he will be satisfied.”
Alexandra, who had been repelled by the half revelation of purely human passion, thrilled at the vision of poetic and spiritual love high on the snowy peaks of Imagination. Ranata looked too exalted to kiss, but the American girl was delighted to find the infrequent tears in her own eyes. In a moment, however, her practical brain replied:
“I don’t believe Fessenden is very sentimental. You will have to educate him.”
“He needs less education than you think.”
“Of course you have already begun to idealize him. He is accustomed to get what he wants. He loves obstacles—and he always surmounts them.”
“I shall give him what he wants.”
Alexandra considered. She had little regard for the ultimate wants of men, had, indeed, given them slight consideration. But she knew that man was extremely prosaic on the subject of matrimony, and she was allured by the prospect of beholding her brother, purified of earthly gross, standing alone on a lofty peak, wrapped in the chastity of spiritual love. She shivered slightly, and Fessenden, somehow, seemed to slip out of the picture; but it pleased her nevertheless, and it was not unlike her own cool and romantic visions of Ranata’s future. Besides, it was not necessarily final. There was always the possibility that Fessenden, if induced to climb his peak, would stay on it only long enough to create a scheme for the further and final subjugation of Ranata. She answered after a moment’s thinking—