“I cannot be a victim if you love me in return, Aline,” I said calmly.
“I—love you?” She laughed in a strange, half-amused way. “What would you have? Would you have me caress you and yet wreck your future; kiss you, and yet at the same moment exert upon you that baneful power which must inevitably sap your life and render you as capable as myself of doing evil to your fellow-men? Ah! you do not know what you say, or you would never suggest that I, of all women, should love you.”
I gazed at her open-mouthed in amazement. Such a speech from the lips of one so young, so beautiful, so altogether ingenuous, was absolutely without parallel.
“I cannot help myself. I love you all the same, Aline,” I faltered.
“Yes, I know,” she replied quickly, with that same strange light in her eyes which I had only noticed once before. At that instant they seemed to flash with a vengeful fire, but in a second the strange glance she gave me had been succeeded by that calm, wistful look which when we had first met had so impressed me.
The idea that she was not quite responsible for her strange speeches I scouted. She was as sane as myself, thoughtful, quick of perception, yet possessing a mysteriousness of manner which was intensely puzzling. This extraordinary declaration of hers seemed as though she anticipated that some terrible catastrophe would befall me, and that now the influence of her beauty was upon me, and I loved her, the spell would drag me to the depths of despair.
“A woman knows in an instant by her natural intuition when she is loved,” she continued, speaking slowly and with emphasis. “Well, if you choose to throw all your happiness to the winds, then you are, of course, at liberty to do so. Yet, if you think that I can ever reciprocate your love you have formed an entirely wrong estimate of my character. One whose mission it is to work evil cannot love. I can hate—and hate well—but affection knows no place in my heart.”
“That’s a terrible self-denunciation,” I said. “Have you never loved, then?”
“Love comes always once to a woman, as it does to a man,” she replied. “Yes, I loved once.”
“And it was an unfortunate attachment?”