“Ah, there is your cold, cautious English spirit—afraid to take the plunge for fear of the consequences! We Magnagrecians are not like that. I waited—oh, so eagerly!—for my romance, and now I live in it. And Olimpia, she is waiting for hers. You can see it in her eyes, can’t you? But you—you hold back; you put out your hands to push romance away; you cry out, ‘Leave me alone! I don’t wish to lose my peace of mind for the sake of a possible overwhelming joy.’”
The vivacious pantomime with which the Princess illustrated her idea of her friend’s mental attitude was irresistible, and Zoe was moved, for peace’ sake, to an imperfect confession.
“You and Donna Olimpia are both very young,” she said. “I have had my romance, and it is over.”
Momentary dismay was succeeded by renewed satisfaction on Princess Emilia’s face. “You shall tell me all about it some day,” she said. “But it is over, is it not?—quite over?” Zoe’s unwilling affirmative seemed to herself like the irrevocable stamping-down of earth upon a grave, but the Princess did not realise the reason of her reluctance. “Then all is well,” she continued enthusiastically. “That is past, done with, but romance is still alive in your heart, and you shall forget that old sadness in a happier present. You will not hold aloof; you will yield yourself to me; is it not so? Do not make me unhappy by refusing happiness if I can put it into your power.”
For a moment Zoe really imagined that the Princess had in some way learnt her story, had penetrated the secret of the gradual death of her hopes as Wylie went serenely on his remorseless way, seeming to be utterly oblivious of the old days when he had been the suppliant, and Zoe had shown herself callous. The bitterness of hope deferred was in her voice as she answered with a catch in her breath, “If I have learnt nothing else since those days, I have, at any rate, learnt to take happiness when it is offered—not to put it off to the future.”
“Ah, I knew you would be reasonable!” cried the Princess, not realising that she was about to destroy the hope so lightly raised. “Then listen. Dear, dear Zeto, you have never met Apolis?”
“The author of ‘Rêves d’Exil’?” Zoe forced herself to answer. “No—I think not; I am sure I have not.”
“He is coming to-night!” announced Princess Emilia, almost with awe. “We met him in Paris; he is the incarnation of romance. You see my plan, then? Here is this gifted poet, himself a disappointed being,—his works show that, don’t they?—and you, cherishing the memory of a dead romance. Why should you not console one another? Think what books you might write in collaboration!”
Zoe’s first impulse was to laugh at the thought of this unknown poet and herself uniting the pageants of their respective bleeding hearts for the edification of Europe, but Princess Emilia was gazing at her with an affection and anxiety hard to resist. “Say you will be kind to him. It is my dearest, most cherished scheme,” she was murmuring.
“I won’t turn my back on him when he is introduced, Principessina,” Zoe assured her. “But I must honestly tell you that your prospect doesn’t appeal to me. I never do care for men of letters in daily life—as witness the Professor. What I like is a man of action.”