"Time cannot show me your character in a nobler light than that in which I see it now. You do not lack the power to win a woman's heart, but I have no heart to give. If you will be my friend, time will increase my affection for you—but time cannot restore the dead."
"Which means that your heart is dead, Diane?"
"Yes," she answered, with unutterable sadness.
"You love some one younger, happier than I?"
"No, M. Lenoble, no one."
"But you have loved? Yes!—a scoundrel, perhaps; a villain, who—"
A spasm of pain contracted his face as he looked at the girl's drooping head; her face, in that dim light, he could not see.
"Tell me this, Diane," he said presently, in an altered voice; "there is no barrier between us—no irrevocable obstacle that must part us for ever? There is no one who can claim you by any right—" He paused; and then added, in a lower voice, "by any wrong?"
"No one," answered Miss Paget, lifting her head, and looking her lover full in the face. Even in that uncertain light he could see the proud steady gaze that seemed the fittest answer of all doubts.
"Thank God!" he whispered. "Ah, how could I fear, even for one moment, that you could be anything but what you seem—the purest among the pure? Why, then, do you reject me? You do not love me, but you ask my friendship; you offer me your friendship, even your affection. Ah, believe me, if those are but real, time will ripen them into love. Your heart is dead. Ah, why should that young heart be dead? It is not dead, Diane; it needs but the fire of true love to warm it into life again. Why should you reject me, since you tell me that you love me; unless you love another? What should divide us?"