"My darling! And I love you. You don't know how I love you. It is like suddenly coming out into sunshine after having lived in a cave all my life. Will you marry me to-morrow, carissima?"
But she drew away from his arms at that.
"Alan, I can't marry you ever. I can only love you."
"Why not? You must, Tony!" The old masterfulness leaped into his voice.
"I cannot, Alan. You know why."
She lifted her eyes to his and in their clear depths he saw reflected his own willful, stained, undisciplined past. He bowed his head in real shame and remorse. Nothing stood between himself and Antoinette Holiday but himself. He had sown the wind. He reaped the whirlwind.
After a moment he looked up again. He made no pretence of misunderstanding her meaning.
"You couldn't forgive?" he pleaded brokenly. Gone was the royal-willed
Alan Massey. Only a beggar in the dust remained.
"Yes, Alan. I could forgive. I do now. I think I can understand how such things can be in a man's life though it would break my heart to think Ted or Larry were like that. But you never had a chance. Nobody ever helped you to keep your eyes on the stars."
"They are there now," he groaned. "You are my star, Tony, and stars are very, very far away from the like of me," he echoed Carlotta's phrase.