“Madame!”
“Go! I hate you!”
“Ah, Madame, we always hate those whom we have wronged. Do not forget that I love you, with a love that passes convention.”
“Monsieur, I am yet a princess. Did you not hear me bid you go?”
“Why?” in a voice singularly free from agitation. “Because I am the only man who has served you unselfishly? Is that the reason, Madame? You have laughed at me. I love you. You have broken me. I love you. I can never look an honest man in the face again. I love you. Though the shade of my father should rise to accuse me, still would I say that I love you. Madame, will you find another love like mine, the first love of a man who will know no second? Forgive me if I rejoice in your despair, for your despair is my hope. As a queen you would be too far away; but in your misfortune you come so near! Madame, I shall follow you wherever you go to tell you that I love you. You will never be able to shut your ears to my voice; far or near, you will always hear me saying that I love you. Ambition soars but a little way; love has no fetters. Madame, your lips were given to me. Can you forget that?”
“Monsieur, what do you wish?” subdued by the fervor of his tones.
“You! nothing in the world but you.”
“Princesses such as I am do not wed for love. What! you take advantage of my misfortune, the shattering of my dreams, to force your love upon me?”
“Madame,” the pride of his race lighting his eyes, “confess to me that you did not win my love to play with it. If my heart was necessary to your happiness, which lay in these shattered dreams, tell me, and I will go. My love is so great that it does not lack generosity.”
For reply she sorted the papers and extended a blood-stained packet toward him. “Here, Monsieur, are your consols.” But the moment his hand touched them, she made as though to take them back. On the top of the packet was the letter she had written to him, and on which he had written his scornful reply to her. She paled as she saw him unfold it.