“Oh,” she whispered, “why did you tell me? Why?”
“Because you accused me, because——” He could not stand there and see her suffer. “I’ve been a brute,” he said; “I’ve been a bungling brute.”
“No, no!” She refused to hear him.
He drew her hands from before her face and revealed it, the underlip indrawn, the blue eyes swimming in hushed tears, all humbled in a wistful appeal.
“A brute!” he repeated.
“No, you are not!” Her fingers closed on his. “You are splendid; you are fine; you are all that I—that I ever——”
“Vitoria!”
Out in the rue du Val de Grâce that rattletrap French hurdy-gurdy struck up “Annie Laurie.” It played badly; its time was uncertain and its conception of the tune was questionable; yet Cartaret thought that, save for her voice, he had never heard diviner melody. She was looking up at him, her hands clasped in his over his pounding heart, her eyes like altar-fires, her lips sacrosanct, and, wreathing her upturned face, seeming to float upon the twilight, hovered, fresh from sunlit mountain-crests of virgin snow, the subtle and haunting perfume that was like a poem in a tongue unknown: the perfume of the Azure Rose.
“Vitoria!” he began again. “You don’t mean that you—that you——”
She interrupted him with a sharp cry. She freed her hands. She went by him to the door.