“All lovers love fiercely,” Robert insisted, passionately.
Perpetua shook her head. “I do not believe you.”
Chafing to find himself so powerless to soften her, Robert made a gesture of despair.
“Ah!” he sighed, “we waste irrevocable seconds that should be spent in kisses.”
Perpetua moved a little closer to him. The man’s pain in his voice stirred the woman’s pity in her heart, and she spoke more tenderly than she had spoken for some time.
“Hunter, if you love me, you shall tell my father your tale and he will be your friend as he is mine, and we will marry and live and die in the woodland.”
She stood before him, beautiful as the living image of a goddess offering herself to a mortal with Olympian simplicity. So might Œnone have willed to wed with Paris. Robert stared at her, amazed, confounded.
“I cannot marry you,” he protested. “You are the executioner’s daughter.”
Now, indeed, the warm color of her cheeks grew warmer and her eyes darkened with indignation.