When the last sigh of those plaintive songs without words had died away, she signed to him to approach her.
'Tell me,' she said very gently, 'tell me the truth. Réné, did you ever care for any woman, dead or lost, more than, or as much as, you care for me? I do not ask you if you loved others. I know all men have many caprices, but was any one of them so dear to you that you regret her still? Tell me the truth; I will be strong to bear it.'
He, relieved beyond expression that she but asked him that on which his conscience was clear and his answer could be wholly sincere, sat down at her feet and leaned his head against her knee.
'Never, so hear me God!' he said simply. 'I have loved no woman as I love you.'
'And there is not one that you regret?'
'There is not one.'
'Then what is it that you do regret? Something more weighs on you than the mere loss of diplomatic life, which; after all, to you is no more than the loss of a toy to Bela.'
'If I do regret,' he said, with a smile, 'it is foolish and thankless. The happiness you give me here is worth all the fret and fever of the world's ambitions. You are so great and good to be so little angered with me for my reticence. All my life, such as it is, shall be dedicated to my gratitude.'
Once more an impulse to tell her all passed over him——a sense that he might trust her absolutely for all tenderness and all pity came upon him; but with the weakness which so constantly holds back human souls from their own deliverance, his courage once again failed him. He once more looking at her thought: 'Nay! I dare not. She would never understand, she would never pardon, she would never listen. At the first word she would abhor me.'
He did not dare; he bent his face down on her knees as any child might have done.