"I love you, dear," he said simply. "You yourself are the beautiful lady I have sought constantly since that time I first saw you, as I looked up into the starry skies. At first I thought your eyes also were stars."
She gazed up at him for a moment, her hand motionless in his, while neither stirred.
"My heart misgives me!" she said then. "Words are so easily said--they are often spoken idly--_pour passer le temps_--and soon forgotten. Ah! Sir Paul! forgive me, I beg of you--if I was mad once. I promise myself it shall never happen again. It was unfortunate--but there are things one cannot explain."
"Are you sure it is love?" she asked him.
Ah! how well Paul knew now, and he bent toward the face of his dreams.
"No! no! not that!" she said, and rose from her place. "You don't know what you do. Please go! go! quickly, for I must be alone."
And then as Paul hesitated for an instant, she fled through the heavy draperies into the room beyond, leaving but a breath of the faint, sweet perfume to hallow the air.
With heart bowed down Paul passed out through the great doorway, the words from an old play ringing through his brain:
"She was lovable, and he loved her; but he was not lovable, and she loved him not."
With the many details of the evening that Paul spent, I will not weary you, dear reader. Wandering about the boulevards he went, like one walking in a dream, at times stopping to rest at some quiet table apart from the throng of merry-makers, entirely disregardful of the laughing faces, the friendly glances that now and then searched him out. Like a canker worm misery gnawed at his heart.
He stopped at a cable office and despatched to his mother, the Lady Henrietta, a message which, though she knew it not, was pregnant with meaning.
Paul wondered afterward, as he sat quietly sipping his coffee in a small _café_, that in the little breast of one mortal there could be such room for infinite wretchedness. Within his heart that night was nothing but darkness and pain. He felt as though his very heart was breaking and bleeding. The sweat lay cold upon his brow and he sighed deeply.
Alas it was all true. He loved her, though she loved him not; he gave her all, and she gave him nothing; and yet he could not part from her. He could not help his unlucky passion.