“You shall not ask me for one!” he cried. “Rather I will give you all the proofs in my power--one or a dozen--what you will--you have only to ask!”
“You are very generous,” she said with her pretty irony. “One will be enough. I want you to-night to take me to Naples. I cannot stay in Capri until my husband returns. I will not return alone to France. It appears that we made a mistake in not going to Naples for our honeymoon. Let us then--you and I--rectify this mistake.”
Léon said nothing. He gripped at the little wooden balcony railing with both hands, and stared with blank eyes at the laughing sea. Leave Capri! Leave Rose! His heart shuddered within him--with every honest fiber of his nature, and he had many honest fibers in his nature, he loved Rose. He did not love the woman before him--but he had sought what she offered--how could he refuse it? It was true he had expected to make his own terms, but this would not be very easy to explain to her. Still, he tried hard to keep the situation in hand.
“I have said,” he began at last, “that I considered your husband, in leaving you, to have committed the worst of infamies. You are asking me to commit the same.”
Madame raised her eyebrows.
“You mean in leaving your wife?” she asked. “After what you have allowed me to suppose, I had not thought you would have that feeling. Nor would it be necessary for you to act as my husband has acted. But I am supposing, of course, that what you feel for me is--real.”
“Pardon me, Madame,” said Léon firmly, “all that I have said to you is true--and yet--is it incredible to you?--I love my wife!”
Madame smiled at him.
“You know how children play with daisies?” she said. “As they pull off the little white petals one by one--‘He loves me--a little, very much, passionately, not at all.’ It is funny what comes after passionately--so soon after, Léon.”
He stirred uneasily. Madame began to pull to pieces a spray of wistaria, throwing the blossoms one by one smilingly into her lap. “I do not ask you, my friend,” she said slowly, “for the devotion of a lifetime--there are hardly enough to go round of these blossoms--we must not stop at passionately, must we--we must stop at not at all! I was thinking of spending three days in Naples.”