As the generous resolve passed dreamily through her mind she was listening to the Coronation Mass of Liszt, as he played it on the organ within. It sounded to her like the hymn of the future; a chorus of grave and glorious voices shouting welcome to the serene and joyous years to come.
When she was next alone with him she said to him very tenderly:
'I want you to promise me one thing.'
'I promise you all things. What is this one?'
'It is this: you are troubled at the thought that I have one of those great fortunes which form the acte d'accusation of socialists against society, and that you have lost all except the rocks and salt beach of Romans. Now I want you to promise me never to think of this fact. It is beneath you. Fortune is so precarious a thing, so easily destroyed by war or revolution, that it is not worth contemplation as a serious barrier between human beings. A treachery, a sin, even a lie, any one of those may be a wall of adamant, but a mere fortune!—Promise me that you will never think of mine, except inasmuch, my beloved, as it may enhance my happiness by ministering to yours.'
He had grown very pale as she spoke, and his lips had twice parted to speak without words coming from them. When she had ceased he still remained silent.
'I do not like the world to come between us, even in a memory; it is too much flattery to it,' she continued. 'Surely it is treason against me to be troubled by what a few silly persons will or will not say in a few salons? You have too little vanity, I think, where others have too much!'
He stooped and kissed her hand.
'Could any man live and fail to be humble before you?' he said with passionate tenderness. 'Yes, the world will say, and say rightly, that I have done a base thing, and I cannot forget that the world will be right; yet since you honour me with your divine pity, can I turn away from it? Could a dying man refuse a draught of the water of life?'
A great agitation mastered him for the moment. He hid his face upon her hands as he held them clasped in his.