“If she had wanted you I should never have been given another thought!”
“It would have been wrong to think of you then, but now I can think of nothing else!” cried Florian, frankly, and his handsome face took on a very pleading look as he added: “Oh, Mae, are you going to be cruel to me because I was frank and honest with you, fearing you might hear my story from some others? It is best to own that I loved Viola dearly once, but now my heart is all your own, and will never stray again if you will accept its devotion, believing that it is possible to give love twice.”
Mae did not answer, for a swift pain cleft her heart, and a red flush burned her face as her lover added:
“Young, romantic girls like you may imagine that it is not possible to love twice, but indeed it is not true. If you will let me teach you the sweet lesson of love, you shall be adored as devotedly as ever Viola was.”
“Hush!” she murmured, faintly; and the tears flashed into her soft blue eyes. She was thinking, sweet Mae, of her own broken love-dream.
“Whom first we love, you know, we seldom wed.”
She dashed away the tears, and murmured, softly:
“I am not blaming you, for—for I know you speak truly. I will be as frank as you. I, too, have loved—but he is dead.”
She bent her face in her hands, and the tears fell through her fingers, thinking of her brief, broken love-dream so pitifully ended.
Yes, it was all over now. She was not sore and angry over it any longer, realizing, as Florian had said, that it was possible to love twice.