"Nor any one else," I answered. "My dear Desiree, do you not know that I am incapable of seriousness? Nothing in the world is worth it."
"At least, you need not pretend," she retorted. "I meant once for you to die. You know it. And since you pretend not to understand me, I ask you—these are strange words from my lips—will you forgive me?"
"There is nothing to forgive."
"My friend, you are becoming dull. An evasive answer should always be a witty one. Must I ask you again?"
"That—depends," I answered, hardly knowing what to say.
"On—"
"On whether or not you were serious, once upon a time, when you made a—shall we call it a confession? If you were, I offended you in my own conceit, but let us be frank. I thought you were acting, and I played my role. I do not yet believe that you were; I am not conceited enough to think it possible."
"I do not say," Desiree began; then she stopped and added hastily: "But that is past. I shall not tell you that again. Perhaps I forgot myself. Perhaps it was a pretty play. You have not answered me."
I looked at her. Strange and terrible as her experiences and sufferings had been, she had lost little of her beauty. Her face was rendered only the more delicate by its pallor. Her white and perfect body, only half seen in the half-darkness, conveyed a sense of the purest beauty with no hint of immodesty.
But I was moved not by what I saw, but by what I knew. I had admired her always as Le Mire; but her bravery, her hardihood, her sympathy for others under circumstances when any other woman would have been thinking only of herself—had these awakened in my breast a feeling stronger than admiration?