"We stand on different peaks of the same mountain range," she answered wistfully. "There is the same sun and sky and stars for us both. It seemed to me that we could have watched the sun rise together."
He held out his hand as though to touch her, and then drew back, his face drawn and hard with the bitterness of mastered passion.
"You don't know what you're saying, Sigrid," he began harshly. "Nor what you are offering me——"
"Myself," she flung in, with joyful fearlessness. "My love for you."
He began to pace the room backwards and forwards, in and out of the light, his hands clenched at his sides.
"I can't—oh, my dear—it's hideous, so hopeless." His voice shook with rough suffering. "Even if things were different—if I were cad—enough—you see, I am being desperately frank now—don't you realize what it would mean—can't you realize what you'd have to pay?"
She watched him patiently. Her first fierce energy had died down. The colour had faded from her cheeks, leaving her with a look of pathetic weariness.
"I've never bothered about the price of things. It's been a curse in my life, I daresay; I shall never be able to sink into a safe, comfortable mediocrity. I've burnt my boats too thoroughly for that. But, instead, I've had the highest and best in life. I've always dared to live to the utmost, Tristram. I wanted to be perfect in my art, and I gave my soul to it. I lived more austerely than a nun, more grandly than an empress. Men wanted to love me, but I never thought of them. There was only one thing for me then—it was like a mountain that I had sworn to climb. I climbed it. And then—then it was over. You can't understand—but I had paid the price to the last farthing. Now, before it's too late, I want the greatest, most splendid thing that perhaps a human being can pray for—the happiness of loving."
Her voice had dropped gradually, as though she had forgotten him. He stood still, frowning at her with a hopeless misery in his exhausted eyes.
"Sigrid—if I'd asked you a month ago would you have been my wife?"