'Let us forget everything,' he murmured, 'except that we have been parted nearly a month!'
[CHAPTER XXV.]
In the morning, after breakfast in the little Saxe room, she said to him with gentle firmness: 'Réné, you must tell me now—why have you refused Russia?'
He had known that the question must come, and all the way on his homeward journey he had been revolving in his mind the answer he would give to it. He was very pale, but otherwise he betrayed no agitation as he turned and looked at her.
'That is what I cannot tell you,' he replied.
She could not believe she heard aright.
'What do you mean?' she asked him. 'I have had a message from Kunst; he is deeply angered. I understand that, after all was arranged, you abruptly resigned the Russian mission. I ask your reasons. It is a very grave step to have taken. I suppose your motives must be very strong ones?'
'They are so,' said Sabran; and he continued in the forced and measured tone of one who recites what he has taught himself to say: 'It is quite natural that your cousin Kunst should be offended; the Emperor also. You perhaps will be the same when I say to you that I cannot tell you, as I cannot tell them, the grounds of my withdrawal. Perhaps you, like them, will not forgive it.'
Her nostrils dilated and her breast heaved: she was startled, mortified, amazed. 'You do not choose to tell me!' she said in stupefaction.