“Why?—tell me why!” I said at length, with a vague feeling that this terrible state of things required some explanation; “do you love someone else?”
She looked at me for a moment without answering. Then she said: “Yes, but—but he—I have never seen him.”
She averted her eyes and hung her head in a manner which showed me that she considered I had a kind of right to question her as to the cause of my misery.
“You love a man you have never seen?” I said quickly, feeling there was a ray of hope.
“You hated a man you had never seen,” she replied just as quickly; “the man in the picture whom you called a fiend—you hated him because his face revolted you. Then why should I not love a man I have never seen?”
“But I saw the face depicted, and I hated the meaning of it.”
“Well, I too have seen a face, and I love the meaning of it.” She spoke still sadly, but like a woman who means to hold her own.
“In the same way as you saw the other?” I asked with a gleam of intelligence.
“Yes; in dreams—in many dreams. For years my heart has been given to the heart of the man whose face I see in dreams.”
“But do you believe that man exists in the flesh?”