I shall not tell you that again.
Perhaps I forgot myself. Perhaps it was a pretty play. You have
not answered me."
I looked at her. Strange and terrible as her experiences and
sufferings had been, she had lost little of her beauty. Her face
was rendered only the more delicate by its pallor. Her white and
perfect body, only half seen in the half-darkness, conveyed a
sense of the purest beauty with no hint of immodesty.
But I was moved not by what I saw, but by what I knew. I had
admired her always as Le Mire; but her bravery, her hardihood,
her sympathy for others under circumstances when any other woman
would have been thinking only of herself--had these awakened in
my breast a feeling stronger than admiration?
I did not know. But my voice trembled a little as I said: "I
need not answer you, Desiree. I repeat that there is nothing to
forgive. You sought revenge, then sacrificed it; but still
revenge is yours."
She looked at me for a moment in silence, then said slowly: "I do
not understand you."
For reply I took her hand in my own from where it lay idly on my
knee, and, carrying it to my lips, pressed a long kiss on the top
of each of the slender white fingers.
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