"Madeleine," he replied, controlling his emotion, "if I did not know your kind heart, I should believe you a Circe, who delighted in driving men mad. Were it not for my cold, sober reason, which you always emphasize, I should now mistake for love the feeling which makes you meet me so graciously, and thus expose myself to disappointment. But reason plainly shows that it is merely the gratitude of a kind heart for a trivial service rendered in an unpleasant situation, and I am too proud to do, in earnest, what I just said in jest--profit by the opportunity."
The countess, chilled and ashamed, drew her hand back. There spoke the dry, prosaic, commonplace man. Had he now understood how to profit by her mood when, in her helpless condition, he appeared as a deliverer in the hour of need, who knows what might have happened! But this was precisely what he disdained. The experienced man of the world knew women well enough to be perfectly aware how easily one may be won in a moment of nervous depression, desperate perplexity and helplessness, yet though ever ready to enjoy every piquant situation, nevertheless or perhaps for that very reason he was too proud to owe to an accident of this kind the woman whom he had chosen for the companion of his life. The countess felt this and was secretly glad that he had spared her and himself a disappointment.
"That is the way with women," he said softly, gazing at her with an almost compassionate expression. "For the mess of pottage of an agreeable situation, they will sell the birthright of their most sacred feelings."
"That is a solemn, bitter truth, such as I am not accustomed to hear from your lips, Prince. But however deep may be the gulf of realism whence you have drawn this experience, you shall not find it confirmed in me."
"That is, you will punish me henceforth by your coldness, while you know perfectly well that it was the sincerity of my regard for you which prompted my act, Countess, that vengeance would be unworthy; a woman like you ought not to sink to the petty sensitiveness of ordinary feminine vanity."
"Oh, Prince, you are always right, and, believe me, if I carried my heart in my head instead of in my breast, that is, if we could love with the intellect, I should have been yours long ago, but alas, my friend, it is so far from the head to the heart."
The Prince lighted another cigarette. No one could detect what was passing in his mind. "So much the worse for me!" he said coldly, shrugging his shoulders.
At that moment a sheet of flame filled the room, and the crashing thunder which followed sounded as if the ceiling had fallen and buried everything under it. The countess seemed bewildered.
"Mother, mother!" shrieked a voice outside. People gathered in the street, voices were heard, shouts, hurrying footsteps and the weeping of the little girl. The prince sprang out of the window, the countess regained her consciousness--of what?
"Some one has been struck by lightning." She hastened out.