“I had far rather not.”
Féodorovna’s thin pale hand drops to her side. “I want every one to see it!” she says. “I want every one to know that if I have loved unhappily, I have loved worthily—have loved the noblest object that ever ‘swam into my ken’!”
The self-satisfied bravado has gone out of her face and manner; and as she lifts her rather colourless eyes to the ceiling, as if expecting to see her General sitting enthroned among the planets, Miss Carew realizes with enhanced consternation that she is in deadly, deadly earnest.
“I always made up my mind,” pursues Féodorovna presently, in an intense low voice, “that if ever I met a man really worth loving—no matter what his situation or circumstances in life were—I would offer myself to him. I have done so!”
“And he has refused you!” rejoins Lavinia in a strangled voice, where wonder and scorn are halt throttling each other. “And you are alive?”
This time the whip-lash does leave a slight weal in its bitter track.
“Why shouldn’t I be alive?” asks Féodorovna, as her throbbing throat rears itself out of the delicate laces and pearls that surround it. “More alive than I have ever been before. So far from being ashamed of my action, I glory in it—yes glory!” her voice rising in jubilant inspiration. “Not one girl in ten thousand would have had the courage to do as I have done!”
Miss Carew draws in her breath between two rows of excellent white teeth.
“And what do you propose to do next? To write and ask him to reconsider his decision?”
The wind is somewhat taken out of the speaker’s sails by the quiet literalness of the answer.