“They told you the truth,” he says calmly, but, lax as he is, his conscience gives a throb of compunction at denying the existence of Zai—Zai, who loves him with every inch of her heart. “But I must go now. I have been here too long already, Marguerite,” he adds rather abruptly.
“You are going?” she asks regretfully, and a tear glistens on her lash. “Do you know I believe I shall never see you again. Is this the only time—tell me the truth, it will be kinder!—that my eyes will look on your face?”
“No. Of course we shall meet again.”
“When?” she asks fervently.
“When? In a very few days, I trust.”
“Will you come here on Wednesday night to supper? Ah, do! Let me have some date to look forward to! Yet, no! Do not come! What use is it for us to meet again? Are you not as far removed from me as heaven from earth? as respectability from unrespectability? Say, is there not an obstacle between us two that we cannot surmount?”
Her lips are quivering. Her heart beats so loudly that he can almost count its throbs. Truly there is no acting in this. Marguerite has fallen in love with him at first sight, as he has done with her.
“There is no obstacle between us,” he whispers, once more denying his wife. “I will come on Wednesday.”
“You will?”
She holds out her hands to him, and as he clasps them closely, he bends his head and his lips nearly rest upon hers.