“You would still be a princess and I a struggling diplomatist.”
“It would make no difference. Our love would be the same,” she answered passionately. “Ah, Gerald, you cannot tell how very lonely my life is without a single person to care for me! I think I am the most melancholy woman in all the world. True, I have wealth, position, and good looks, the three things that the world believes necessary for the well-being of women; but I lack one—the most necessary of them all—the affection of the man I love.”
“I can’t help it, Léonie!” I cried. “Indeed, it is not my fault that my friendship does not overstep the bounds. Some day it may, but I tell you frankly and honestly that at present it does not. I am your friend, earnest and devoted to you—a friend such as few women have, perhaps. Were I not actually your friend I should now, at this moment, become selfish, feign love, and thus become your bitterest enemy.”
“You are cold as ice,” she answered hoarsely, in a low tone of disappointment.
Her countenance fell, as though she were utterly crushed by my straightforward declaration.
“No, you misunderstand,” I replied, taking her hand tenderly in mine, and speaking very earnestly. “To-day the romance that exists within the breast of every woman is stirred within you, and causes you to utter the same words as you did at sixteen, when your first love was, in your eyes, a veritable god. You will recall those days—days when youth was golden, and when the world seemed a world of unceasing sunshine and of roses without thorns. But you, like myself, have obtained knowledge of what life really is, and have become callous to so much that used to impress and influence us in those long-past days. We have surely both of us taught ourselves to pause and to reason.”
She hung her head in silence, as if she w’ere a scolded child, her looks fixed upon the ground.
“My refusal to mislead you into a belief that I love you is as painful to me as it is to you, Léonie,” I went on, still holding her hand in mine. “I would do anything rather than cause you a moment’s trouble and unhappiness, but I am determined that I will not play you false. These are plain, hard words, I know; but some day you will thank me for them—you will thank me for refusing to entice you into a marriage which could only bring unhappiness to both of us.”
“I shall never thank you for breaking my heart,” she said in a sad voice, looking up at me. “You cannot know how I suffer, or you would never treat me thus!”
“The truth is always hardest to speak,” I answered, adding, in an attempt to console her: “Let us end it all, and return to our old style of friendship.”