"Zinka," he said in a low tone, "Zinka--Lent is over--Easter is come."
"Yes? what do you mean?" she said coldly, almost sternly.
"I mean," he said, and he looked her straight in the face, "that I have fasted and that now I will feast, and be happy."
They were in a small room--a sort of raised recess divided from the ball-room by a row of pillars; they were alone.
A joy so acute as to be almost pain came over Zinka. It blinded and stunned her; she did not speak, she did not smile, she did not even look up at him; she could not have stirred even if she had wished it--she was paralyzed. He thought she would not hear him.
"Zinka," he urged, "can you not forgive me for having jingled the fool's cap for six weeks till I could not hear the music of the spheres? Can you not forgive me--for the sake of the misery I have endured? I can bear it no longer--I confess and yield unconditionally--I cannot live without you...."
Zinka was not strong enough to bear such emotion; the terrible tension to which for the last quarter of an hour her pride had compelled her gave way; she tottered, put out her hands, and was falling. He put his arm round her and with the other hand pushed open a glass door that led into the garden.
"Come out, the air will do you good," he said scarcely audibly, and they went out on to the deserted terrace. His arm clasped her more closely and drew her to him. Involuntarily he waited till she should make some effort to free herself from his hold; but she was quite passive; she only raised a tear-bedewed face with a blissful gaze into his eyes, and whispered: "I ought not to forgive you so easily...." and then, with no more distrust or fear than a child clinging to its mother, she let her head fall on his shoulder and sobbed for happiness. A strange reverence came over him; the sound of some church bell came up from the city. He kissed her with solemn tenderness on the forehead and only said:
"My darling, my sacred treasure!" She was safe.
When the general came out of the card-room to look once more at the dancers before he withdrew, the cotillon, with its fanciful figures and lavish distribution of ribbons and flowers, was nearly over.