"A man can only love as the love comes to him," he murmured. "What might have been, I do not know. I have thought I loved many, but I never knew that I loved till I saw little Claire Agnew."
"But if you had not—tell me," she sobbed; "I will be content, if you will only tell me."
"I do not know," said John d'Albret, driven into a corner; "perhaps I might—if I had seen you first."
To the young man it seemed an easy thing to say—a necessary thing, indeed. For, coming fresh from the fear and the place of torment, he was glad to say anything not to be sent thither again.
"But say it," she cried, coming nearer and clasping his arm hard, "say it all—not that you might, but that you would—with the same love that goes easily to death, that I—I—I might escape. Oh, for me, I would go to a thousand deaths if only I knew—surely—surely, that one man in the world would do as much for me!"
But the Abbé John had reached his limit. Not even to escape the Place of the Eyes could he deny his love, or affirm that he could ever have loved to the death any but his little Claire.
"I saw her, and I loved!" he said simply—"that is all I know. Had I seen you, I might have loved—that also I do not know. More I cannot say. But be assured that, if I had loved you, not knowing the other, I should have counted, for your sake, my poor life but as a leaf, wind-blown, a petal fallen in the way."
Valentine la Niña nervously crumpled the glorious red and fleshy blossoms of the pomegranate clusters in her fingers, till they fell in blood-drops on the floor.
"You are noble," she said; "I knew it when I saw you at Collioure on the hillside—more, a prince in your own land, near to the throne even. So am I—and Philip the King himself would not deny me. He is your country's enemy. Yet at my request he would stay his hand. He must fight the English. He must subdue the Low Countries. That is his oath. But if you will—if you will—he would aid the Bearnais, or better still, you yourself to a throne, and give me—who can say what?—perhaps this very Roussillon for a dower. For I am close of kin to the King. He would acknowledge me as such. I have vowed a vow, but now it is almost paid; and if it were not I would go to the Pope himself, though I walked every step of the road to Rome!"
"I cannot—I cannot——" cried John d'Albret. "Thank God, I am not of the first-born of kings, whose hands are put up to the highest bidder. Where I have loved, there will I wed or not at all!"