Chapter XV
1
“So you are going on a long journey?” she asked.
He sat facing her, motionless, with anguish on his face. Outwardly she was very calm, only there was a sadness in her look and in her voice. In her white dress, with the girdle falling before her feet, she lay back among the three pillows of the rose-moiré sofa; the tips of her little slippers were buried in the white sheepskin rug. On the table before her lay a great bouquet of loose roses, pink, white and yellow, bound together with a broad riband. He had brought them for her and she had not yet placed them. There was a great calm about her; the exquisite atmosphere of the boudoir seemed unchanged.
“Tell me, am I not paining you severely?” he asked, with the anguish in his eyes, the eyes which she now knew so well.
She smiled:
“No,” she said. “I will be honest with you. I have suffered, but I suffer no longer. I have struggled with myself for the second time and I have conquered myself. Will you believe me?”
“If you knew the remorse that I feel....”