“Ah!” she exclaimed, a slight flush mounting to her delicate, well-moulded cheeks, “you received my note last night, Gerald? Can you forgive me? I am a woman, and should not have written so.”
“Forgive!” I repeated. “Of course I forgive you anything, Léonie.”
“You think none the worse of me for it?” she urged, speaking rapidly in French. “Indeed, I allowed my pen to run away, and now I regret it.”
I breathed more freely. Her attitude was that of a woman who, conscious of error, now wished it to be forgotten.
“To regret is quite unnecessary,” I assured her in a low voice of sympathy. “We are all of us human, and sometimes we err.”
Silence fell between us for a few moments. It struck me that she was striving strenuously to preserve her self-restraint.
“You will destroy that letter, promise me,” she urged, looking piercingly into my face. “It was foolish—very foolish—of me to write it.”
“I have done so,” I answered, although, truth to tell, it still remained in my pocket.
“And you will not despise me because in an hour of foolishness I confessed my love for you?”
“I shall never despise you, Léonie,” I answered. “We have always been good friends, but never lovers. The latter we never shall be.”