"Opal!" he cried impetuously. "After seeing these gay Lotharios making eyes at you all the evening, can you ask me that? I want to take you away and hide you from every other man's sight—that's what I want! It drives me crazy to see them look at you that way! But you have such a way of keeping a fellow at arm's length when you want to," he went on, ruefully, "in spite of the magic call of your whole tempting personality. You know 'Die Walküre,' don't you?—but of course you do. If I believed in the theory of reincarnation, I should feel sure that you were Brünhilde herself, surrounded by the wall of fire!"
"I wish I were! I wish every woman had some such infallible way of proving every man who seeks her!"
"You have, Opal! You have your own womanly instincts—every woman's impassable wall of fire, if she will only hide behind them. You could never love unworthily!"
"But, Paul, don't you know? Haven't they told you? I shall probably marry the Count de Roannes!"
Paul was astounded.
"Opal! No! No! Not that, surely not that! I heard it, yes—a moment ago. But I could not believe it. The idea was too horrible. It could not be true!"
"But it is true, Paul! It is all too true!"
"It is a crime," he fairly groaned.
She shrank from him. "Don't say that, Paul!"
"But you know it is true! Opal, just think! If you give your sweet self to him—and that is all you can give him, as you and I know—if you give yourself to him, I say, I—I shall go mad!"