"What is it, Hermione?" he said again.
"If beauty were only deathless!"
"But—but all this is, for us. It was here for the old Greeks to see, and I suppose it will be here—"
"I didn't mean that."
"I've been stupid," he said, humbly.
"No, my dearest—my dearest one. Oh, how did you ever love me?"
She had forgotten the warning of Artois. The dirty little beggar was staring at the angel and wanted the angel to know it.
"Hermione! What do you mean?"
He looked at her, and there was genuine surprise in his face and in his voice.
"How can you love me? I'm so ugly. Oh, I feel it here, I feel it horribly in the midst of—of all this loveliness, with you."