Marien did listen at first as if surprised, and then with a flush of pleasure that steadily deepened on her cheeks. Even when he had concluded she sat for a moment with lips half parted, eyes half closed, and an expression of enchantment upon her face as if listening to music that she wished might flow on forever.
"Do not speak!" John protested suddenly, as her expression appeared to change. "The picture is too beautiful to spoil. Let me take from your lips in silence the kiss that seals our betrothal."
But Marien held him off with sudden strength.
"Marien, I love you. I love you," he protested vehemently.
"No," Marien replied, lifting herself higher amid the pillows and speaking alertly as if she had just been given words to answer. "You do not love me. You love the thing you think I am."
John's blond brows were lifted in mute protest.
"Listen!" she exclaimed. "You compelled me to listen. Now I must compel you to listen—mad, impetuous man!" and she seemed almost resentful. "In what you have just been saying, you have written a part for me. You have given me a character. If I could play that part always, I should be what you are in love with, and you would love me always; but I cannot play it always; I can play it seldom. I play it now for an hour and then perhaps never again."
"Never again?" Hampstead gasped, something in the finality of her tone thrilling him through with a hollow, sickening note.
Her eyelids narrowed as she replied: "You forget that I, too, live the calculating life."
There was again that mysteriously sinister meaning in her utterance of the word "calculating."