"Pardon? Ah, I knew that you loved me."
"That indeed a blind man could have seen," murmurs he bitterly. "But, Linda, could you resolve to be my wife?"
"Could I resolve?" she murmurs with tender roguishness. "And why not?"
"In spite of my past?"
Past! The word has a romantic charm for her. It wakes in her an idea of baccaret and mabille, of a brilliantly squandered fortune, of ballet-dancers and duels. A "past" in her mind belongs to every true nobleman of a certain age.
"If your heart is now wholly mine, what does your past matter to me?" says she softly.
Then he kisses her hand. "Linda you are an angel," whispers he, and silent and happy, they finish their walk.
Ten minutes later, before the ambitious singer, Raimund, reaches home, Linda was in the house.
She stood on the balcony of the "Emperor of China," between dead-looking oleander trees which exhale a tiresome odor of bitter almonds: she stands there, her arms resting on the balustrade when Raimund and his donkey emerge from the shadows of the street. His red cap pushed back, his face shining as if freshly shaven, with glance directed upward in terror he comes along, the picture of bankrupt responsibility on a donkey.
A gay laugh greets him.