“And yet, to judge from your looks while thus absorbed, your dreams must have been delightful I longed to participate in them.”
“I know not whether they were delightful or otherwise, but they were commonplace and true. Alas! I was thinking that the heavens are as beautiful as the earth is sad.”
“Sad?... Yes, without doubt, but likewise very beautiful at times, something like the sky above our heads, so glorious to-night, but which does not always look as it does now.”
“But the clouds pass away, and the sky again appears in its unchangeable beauty; whereas....”
“Whereas, a single day is sometimes sufficient to render our lives totally different from what they were before. Yes, you are right,” said he.
He was silent for an instant, and then resumed with a smile:
“But these gloomy thoughts do not always prevail. It was very far from the case the evening I first saw you in Naples.”
“Oh! never speak again of that evening, Monsieur de Kergy, I conjure you,” I exclaimed with a warmth I could not repress. “Have I not already told you that I was wretched, infatuated, desperate?...”
I stopped short, confused at what had escaped me. I saw his expression of surprise, and noticed again the look of sympathy and emotion he had shown at Paris, as I wept while listening to Diana's music—a look that silently asked me the cause of my tears. Alas! the day I last visited the Hôtel de Kergy was that on which the sadness that now wholly surrounded me first cast its shadow over my path. But I did not wish to betray what I felt now, any more than I did then, and I instantly regretted [pg 316] the words I had just uttered. I think Gilbert perceived it.
“I assure you,” said he after a moment, as if I had never spoken, “notwithstanding the brilliancy of your attire, you were far less imposing in my eyes than you are at this moment; and yet I am going to show a boldness I certainly should not have thought of manifesting that evening, to which I shall never allude again.”