"Do men keep secrets better?" she asked. "I think not! Will you, for instance, keep mine?"
"Yours?" And for a moment he was puzzled, being a man who thought chiefly of himself and his own pleasure for the moment. "What is your secret?"
She laughed. "Oh, 'Sieur Amadis'! You pretend not to know! Is it not the same as yours? You must not tell anybody that I—I—"
He understood-and pressed hard the little hand he held.
"That you—well? Go on! I must not tell anybody—what?"
"That I love you!" she said, in a tone so grave and sweet and angelically tender, that for a second he was smitten with a sudden sense of shame.
Was it right to steal all this unspoilt treasure of love from a heart so warm and susceptible? Was it fair to enter such an ivory castle of dreams and break open all the "magic casements opening on the foam, Of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn"? He was silent, having no response to give to the simple ardour of her utterance. What he felt for her was what all men feel for each woman who in turn attracts their wandering fancies—the desire of conquest and possession. He was moved to this desire by the irritating fact that this girl had startled an apathetic public on both sides of the Atlantic by the display of her genius in the short space of two years—whereas he had been more than fifteen years intermittently at work without securing any such fame. To throw the lasso of Love round the flying Pegasus on which she rode so lightly and securely, would be an excitement and amusement which he was not inclined to forgo—a triumph worth attaining. But love such as she imagined love to be, was not in his nature—he conceived of it merely as a powerful physical attraction which exerted its influence between two persons of opposite sexes and lasted for a certain time—then waned and wore off—and he recognised marriage as a legal device to safeguard a woman when the inevitable indifference and coldness of her mate set in, making him no longer a lover, but a household companion of habit and circumstance, lawfully bound to pay for the education of children and the necessary expenses of living. In his inmost consciousness he knew very well that Innocent was not of the ordinary feminine mould—she had visions of the high and unattainable, and her ideals of life were of that pure and transcendental quality which belongs to finer elements unseen. The carnal mind can never comprehend spirituality,—nevertheless, Jocelyn was a man cultured and clever enough to feel that though he himself could not enter, and did not even care to enter the uplifted spheres of thought, this strange child with a gift of the gods in her brain, already dwelt in them, serenely unconscious of any lower plane. And she loved him!—and he would, on that ground of love, teach her many things she had never known—he would widen her outlook,—warm her senses—increase her perceptions—train her like a wild rose on the iron trellis of his experience—while thus to instruct an unworldly soul in worldliness would be for him an interesting and pleasurable pastime.
"And I can make her happy"—was his additional thought—"in the only way a woman is ever happy—for a little while!"
All this ran through his mind as he held her hand a moment longer, till the convincing music of the band and the brilliant lights of the house warned them to break away from each other.
"We had better go straight to the ball-room and dance in," he said. "No one will have missed us long. We've only been absent about a quarter of an hour."