“Of course it is. It was in all the papers. Didn’t you see it?”
“Yes, I saw it. I didn’t believe it. I was in Poland when I heard and I started for England at once. But I was taken ill on the journey. Since then I’ve been travelling night and day.” He paused, adding in a tone of finality: “You must break it off.”
“Break it off? Are you crazy, Antoine?”
“No, I’m not crazy. But you’re mine. You’re meant for me. And no other man shall have you.”
Magda’s first impulse was to order him out of the room. But the man’s haggard face was so pitifully eloquent of the agony he had been enduring that she had not the heart. Instead, she temporised persuasively.
“Don’t talk like that, Antoine.” She spoke very gently. “You don’t mean it, you know. If—if you do care for me as you say, you’d like me to be happy, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d make you happy,” he said hoarsely.
She shook her head.
“No,” she answered. “You couldn’t make me happy. Only Michael can do that. So you must let me go to him. . . . Antoine, I’d rather go with your good wishes. Won’t you give them to me? We’ve been friends so long—”
“Friends?” he broke in fiercely. “No! We’ve never been ‘friends.’ I’ve been your lover from the first moment I saw you, and shall be your lover till I die!”