“Have I the happiness to be necessary to you?” he asked.
“You have not been enjoying yourself.”
“No, Madame; my conscience is, unhappily, too green.” He turned to the window again for fear he would lose control of himself.
“I have a confession to make to you,” she said humbly. How broad his shoulders were, was her thought.
“It can not concern me,” he replied.
“How?”
“There is only one confession which I care to hear. You made it once, though you are not willing to repeat it. But I have your word, Sylvia; I am content. Not all the world could make me believe that you would willingly retract that word.”
Her name, for the first time coming from his lips, caused her to start. She sent him a penetrating glance, but it broke on a face immobile as marble.
“I do not recollect granting you permission to use my given name,” she said.
“O, that was before the world. But alone, alone as we are, you and I, it is different.” The smile which accompanied these words was frankness itself, but it did not deceive Madame, who read his eyes too well. “Ah, but the crumbs you give this love of mine are so few!” “You are the only man in the world permitted to avow love to me. You have kissed my hand.”