“You must have strange customs in England,” she said, her eyes flashing again, this time with anger. “What right have I to charge you with anything? What interest have I in your affairs?”
“Aurélie,” he exclaimed, astonished: “do you not know that I love you like a madman?”
“You never told me so,” she said. “Do Englishwomen take such things for granted?” She blushed as she said so, and immediately bent her face into her hands; laughed a little and cried a little in a breath. This lasted only an instant; for, hearing Herbert’s chair drawn rapidly to the side of hers, she sat erect, and checked him by a movement of her wrist.
“Monsieur Herbert: according to our ideas in my country a declaration of love is always accompanied by an offer of marriage. Do you then offer me your love, and reserve your hand for Miss Sutherland?”
“You are unjust to yourself and to me, Aurélie. I offered you only my love because I could think of nothing else. I do not expect you to love me as blindly as I love you; but will you consent to be my wife? I feel — I know by instinct that there can be no more unhappiness for me in the world if you will only call me your dearest friend.” He said this in a moment of intoxication, produced by an accidental touch of her sleeve against his hand.
Aurélie became pensive. “No doubt you are our dear friend, Monsieur Herbert, We have not many friends. I do not find that there is any such thing as love”
“You do not care for me.” he said, dejected.
“Indeed, you must not think so,” she said quickly. “You have been so kind to us, though we are strangers. For we are strangers, are we not? You hardly know us. And you are so foreign!”
“I! I have not a drop of foreign blood in my veins. You are not accustomed to England yet. I hope you not think me too cold. Oh! I am jealous of all your countrymen!”
“You need not be, Heaven knows! We have few friends in Poland.”
“Aurélie do you know that you are saving ‘we,’ and ‘us,’ as if you did not understand that I love you alone — that I am here, not as a friend of your family, but as suitor to yourself, blind to the existence of any other person in the universe. In your presence I feel as if I were alone in some gallery of great pictures, or listening in a beautiful valley to the singing of angels, yet with some indescribable rapture added to that feeling. Since I saw you, all my old dreams and enthusiasms have come to life again. You can blot them out forever, or make them everlasting with one word. Do you love me?”
She turned hesitatingly towards him, but waited to say, “And it is then wholly false what Madame Feepson said that night?”
“What did she say?” demanded Herbert, turning red with disappointment.
She drew back, and looked earnestly at him. “Madame said,” she replied in a low voice, “that Miss Sutherland was your affianced.”
“Let me explain,” said Adrian, embarrassed. She rose at once, shocked. “Explain!” she repeated. “Oh, Monsieur, yes or no?”
“Yes, then, since you will not listen to me,” he said, with some dignity. She sat down again, slowly, looking round as if for counsel.
“What shall you not think of me if I listen now?” she said, speaking for the first time in English.
“I shall think that you love me a little, perhaps. You have condemned me on a very superficial inference, Aurélie. Engagements are not irrevocable in England. May I tell you the truth about Miss Sutherland?”
Aurélie shook her head doubtfully, and said nothing. But she listened.
“I became engaged to her more than two — nearly three years ago. As I told you, her elder brother, Mr Phipson’s son-in-law, is a great friend of mine; and through him I came to know her very intimately. I owe it to her to confess that her friendship sustained me through a period of loneliness and discouragement, a period in which my hand was untrained, and my acquaintances, led by my mother, were loud in their contempt for my ability as an artist and my perverseness and selfishness in throwing away opportunities of learning banking and stockbroking. Miss Sutherland is very clever and well read. She set herself to study painting with ardor when I brought it under her notice, and soon became a greater enthusiast than I. She probably exaggerated my powers as an artist: at all events I have no doubt that she gave me credit for much of the good influence upon her that was really wrought by her new acquaintance with the handiwork of great men. However that may be, we were united in our devotion to art; and I was deeply grateful to her for being my friend when I had no other. I was so lonely that, in my fear of losing her, I begged her to betroth herself to me. She consented without hesitation, though my circumstances necessitated a long engagement. That engagement has never been formally dissolved, but fulfillment of it is now impossible. Long before I saw you and found out for the first time what love really is, our relations had insensibly altered. Miss Sutherland cooled in her enthusiasm for painting as soon as she discovered that it could not be mastered like a foreign language or an era in history. She came under the influence of Mr Jack, who may be a man of genius — I am no judge of musical matters — and who is undoubtedly, in his own way, a man of honor. But he is so far from possessing the temperament of an artist, that his whole character, his way of living, and all his actions, are absolutely destructive of that atmosphere of melancholy grandeur in which great artists find their inspiration. His musical faculty, to my mind, is as extraordinary an accident as if it had occurred in a buffalo. However, Miss Sutherland turned to him for guidance in artistic matters; and doubtless he saved her the trouble of thinking for herself; for she did not question him as she had been in the habit of questioning me. Perhaps he understood her better than I. He certainly behaved towards her as I had never behaved; and, though it still seems to me that my method was the more respectful to her, he supplanted me in her regard most effectually. I do not mean to convey that he did so intentionally; for anything less suggestive of affection for any person — even for himself — than his general conduct, I cannot imagine; but she chose not to be displeased. I was hurt by her growing preference for him: it discouraged me more than the measure of success which I had begun to achieve in my profession elated me. Yet on my honor I never knew what jealousy meant until I saw you, playing Jack’s music. I did not admire you for your performance, nor for the applause you gained. There are little things that an artist sees, Aurélie, that surpass brilliant fingering of the keyboard. I cannot describe them; they came home to me as you appeared on the platform; as you slipped quietly into your place; as you replied to Manlius’s inquiring gesture by a look — it was not even a nod, and yet it reassured him instantly. When the music commenced you became dumb to me, though to the audience you began to speak. I only enjoyed that lovely strain in the middle of the fantasia, which by Jack’s own confession, owed all its eloquence to you alone. When Mr. Phipson brought us under the orchestra and introduced us to you, I hardly had a word to say; but I did not lose a tone or a movement of yours. You were a stranger, ignorant of my language, a privileged person in a place where I was only present on sufferance. For all I knew, you might have been married. Yet I felt that there was some tie between us that far transcended my friendship with Miss Sutherland, though she was bound to me by her relationship to my old school friend, and by every coincidence of taste, culture, and position that can exist between man and woman. I knew at once that I loved you, and had never loved her. Had I met her as I met you, do you think I would have troubled Mr Phipson to introduce me to her? My jealousy of Jack vanished: I was content that he should be your composer if I might be your friend. Mary’s attachment to him now became the source of my greatest happiness. His music and your playing were the attractions on which all the concerts relied. Jack went to these concerts: Mary went with Jack: I followed Mary. We always had an opportunity of speaking to you, thanks to my rival. It was he who encouraged Mary to call on you. It is to him that I owe my freedom from any serious obligation in respect of my long engagement; and hence it is through him also that I dare to come here and beg you to be my wife. Aurélie: I passed