“It is easy,” he went on, for the pause had been but momentary, and Alexia showed no desire to interrupt him, “it is easy to moralize and to propound codes of so-called honour, but when a man is possessed by a love as desperate, as all-absorbing as mine, he is scarcely to be blamed if, while human nature remains as it is, he seizes any advantage which fate may give him.”
“Advantage?” she repeated thoughtfully. “You say Fate has given you an advantage—over me?”
There was an infinity of suggestion, of latent disdain, in the question.
“Don’t let us put it that way, Countess,” he protested.
“The word was yours, not mine,” she returned.
“True. But the application was yours. Let us look the situation squarely in the face,” he proceeded, anxious now to come to the point, lest the interview should be interrupted before he had declared himself. “Don’t you think that, as you and I are, presumably, the only people in the world who know your secret, we—we might share more than that?”
He paused for her answer, but none came. Her attitude suggested that she was waiting for him to go on to the end, if it were not already reached.
“Countess!”
Thus called upon, she looked up.
“With regard to your proposal,” she said, in quite a matter-of-fact tone, “it has the disadvantage of being based upon false premises.”