"I cannot--dare not tell you."
"Indeed!" Her black lashes drooped for a moment, and she passed a white hand nervously over her golden braids. "And wherefore?"
"It would be to reveal the secrets of another."
"Another whom you love?" she asked, hurriedly, while her teeth seemed to glitter as well as her eyes, for her lips were parted.
"No, no; on my honour, no!" said I, laying my right hand on my breast, and feeling that then I spoke but the truth and without the equivocation, to which her questions were forcing me. Then Valerie seemed to blush with pleasure, and my heart beat lightly with joy. I should certainly have done something rash; but the inevitable Madame Tolstoff was in the room, embroidering a smoking cap for her son the colonel, then in command of the 26th at Sebastopol; so I was compelled to content myself by simply touching the hand of Valerie, and by caressing it tenderly, while affecting to admire a beautiful opal ring she wore, and urging her to continue her music. The whole episode partook somewhat of the nature of a scene between us, and even the usually self-possessed Valerie seemed a little confused, as she once more laid her tapered fingers on the ivory keys.
"I am very far from perfect in my music, or anything else, perhaps," she said.
"Do not say so," I whispered; "yet had you been more perfect than you are, I think no other woman in this world would have had the chance of a lover."
"How--why?"
"All men would be loving you, and you only."
"This is more like the inflated flattery of a Frenchman than the speech of a sober Briton," said Valerie, a little disdainfully.