Elinor could hardly keep back her tears.
"Then," she said timidly, "you love her still?"
"I scarcely know if I do, if I am weak enough to love her still; but our meetings, the moments spent in her presence, her grace, even her capriciousness,—all are graven on my memory. She has bruised my soul, and taken the glamour from life for me."
"Oh," cried Elinor in a heartbroken voice, "such constancy deserves reward. You may be sure that the day will come when she will return, humbled in her turn, softened, to heal the wounds she has caused and to win your pardon."
"Never! For three years that proud, unfeeling woman has never condescended to send me as much as a word of remembrance. She has probably gone back to her own land, to India, America, or where not. She has triumphed, and must be laughing at my credulity, and I should like to forget her. Lately I have almost thought it might be possible, and perhaps, indeed," he added, in an altered voice, "I shall succeed only too soon."
"You will forget her, Léon?"
The words had been spoken in a voice of such tender reproach that Léon gazed at her. He saw that her eyes were full of tears.
"Ah, madame," he said, after a moment's pause, "your sympathy is very dear to me! If only she had your nature, your responsive sensitiveness, I should be a happy man today. My own child, perhaps as pretty as yours, would be now sitting on my knee."
Then, turning on Elinor his still languid eyes:
"And her mother—close beside me—loving—"