“I am not going, Photini. My mind is made up. I will stay with you. Be kind to me. Say you want me.”
“I must not, for then I could not bring myself to give you up. Go away, and think over it. Mind, I would far rather you did not come back, and I think I should be able to kiss with gratitude a note from you telling me you had gone back to that girl.”
“You will get no such note from me, for I am going to stay now,” Rudolph exclaimed, impetuously.
“You are a fool. There, I would have saved you—now, it is as heaven wills it. But please remember this. When you come to repent this step, as you will surely in a week, a month, or a year, have the goodness not to bluster and expend your rage on me, or lay your folly to my account.”
Rudolph laughed bitterly.
“I think, mademoiselle, you would very soon make short work of me and my bluster and rage,” he said.
“Well, yes, I believe I should be able for that emergency.”
“Photini, will you play me the ‘Barcarolle’?” Rudolph asked, as he rubbed his cheek caressingly against her arm.
She stooped over him, kissed his hair and forehead, and their lips met in a burning kiss—Rudolph’s first.