She made no answer, only looked at me with a kind of mingled grief and joy, bliss embittered by despair.
"It cannot be," I went on, "that Heaven would permit so great a love to find no response. Will you not answer me, mademoiselle?"
"What answer would you have?" she asked, in a perturbed voice.
"I would have love for love."
Her answer was arrested by the sound of the gypsy's voice, which at that instant rose in an old song, that one in which a woman's love is likened to a light or a fire. These are the first words:
"Bright as the sun, more quick to fade;
Fickle as marsh-lights prove;
Where brightest, casting deepest shade—
False flame of woman's love."
"Heed the song, monsieur," said mademoiselle, in the tone of one who warns vaguely of a danger which dare not be disclosed openly.
"It is an old, old song," I answered. "The raving of some misanthrope of bygone time."
"It has truth in it," she said.
"Nay, he judged all women from some bitter experience of his own. His song ought to have died with him, ought to be shut up in the grave wherein he lies, with his sins and his sorrows."