Part 21 (1/2)
”But once, sir, was enough! You insult me with your money, and when I ask you why you do it, you answer that you love me. Love!”
She uttered the concluding word with an intensity of scorn that lashed him. She turned to go, but, as on the occasion of their first meeting, he stepped forward and barred the way.
”You have no right to put that construction on what I say. Our points of view are different.”
”Yes--thank the Holy Saints they _are_ different!”
”I shall try to understand yours; I beg you to try to understand mine.”
Their eyes met again. In his it was impossible for her not to read the truth. Slowly she lowered hers.
”In my country,” she said, more softly now, but still proudly, ”love is another sort of thing. In my country I should have said: 'If you respect me, sir, you perhaps love me; if you do not respect me, it is out of the question that you should love me.'”
”Respect you?” This was a challenge to his love that he could not leave unanswered. His voice rose fresh and clear. He was no longer under the necessity of seeking words: they leaped, living, to his lips. ”Respect you? Good G.o.d, I've been wors.h.i.+ping the very thought of you from the first glimpse of you I ever had. This miserable room has been a holy place to me because you have twice been in it. It's been a holy place, because, from the moment I first found you here, it has been a place where I dreamed of you. Night and day I've dreamed of you; and yet have I ever once knowingly done you any harm, trespa.s.sed or presumed on your kindness? I've seen no pure morning without thinking of you, no beautiful sunset without remembering you; you've been the harmony of every bar of music, of every bird-song, that I've heard. When you were gone, the world was empty for me; when I was with you, all the rest of the world was nothing, and less than nothing.
Respect you? Why, I should have cut off my right hand before I let you even guess what you've discovered to-day!”
As he spoke, her whole att.i.tude altered. Her hands were still clenched at her sides, but clenched now in another emotion.
”Is--is this true?” she asked. Her voice was very low.
”It is true,” he answered.
”And yet”--she seemed to be not so much addressing him as trying to quiet an accuser in her own heart--”I never spoke one word that could give you any hope.”
”Not one,” he gravely a.s.sented. ”I never asked for hope; I don't expect it now.”
”And it is--it is really true?” she murmured.
Again he spoke in answer to what she seemed rather to address to her own heart:
”Because you found out what I'd done, I wanted you to know why I'd done it--and no more. If you hadn't found out about Chitta, I would never have told you--this.”
She tried to smile, but something caught the smile and broke it. With a sudden movement, she raised her white hands to her burning face.
”Oh,” she whispered, ”why did you tell me? Why?”
”Because you accused me, because----” He could not stand there and see her suffer. ”I've been a brute,” he said; ”I've been a bungling brute.”
”No, no!” She refused to hear him.
He drew her hands from before her face and revealed it, the underlip indrawn, the blue eyes swimming in hushed tears, all humbled in a wistful appeal.
”A brute!” he repeated.
”No, you are not!” Her fingers closed on his. ”You are splendid; you are fine; you are all that I--that I ever----”
”Vitoria!”
Out in the rue du Val de Grace that rattletrap French hurdy-gurdy struck up ”Annie Laurie.” It played badly; its time was uncertain and its conception of the tune was questionable; yet Cartaret thought that, save for her voice, he had never heard diviner melody. She was looking up at him, her hands clasped in his over his pounding heart, her eyes like altar-fires, her lips sacrosanct, and, wreathing her upturned face, seeming to float upon the twilight, hovered, fresh from sunlit mountain-crests of virgin snow, the subtle and haunting perfume that was like a poem in a tongue unknown: the perfume of the Azure Rose.