The Grey Cloak - Page 246/256

Silence.

"Well, Madame?"

"I . . . I have brought you another!" Redder than ever her face

flamed. The handkerchief was resolving itself into shreds.

"Another letter?" vaguely.

"No, no! Another . . . another answer!"

How still everything had suddenly grown to him! "Another answer? You

have brought me another answer?" Then the wine of life rushed through

his veins, and all darkness was gone. "Diane, Diane!" he cried,

springing toward her.

"Yes, yes; always call me that! Never call me Gabrielle!"

"And Victor?"

Her hands were against his breast and she was pushing him back. "Oh,

it is true that I loved him, as a woman would love a brave and gallant

brother." A strand of hair fell athwart her eyes and she brushed it

aside.

"But I?--I, whom you have made dance so sorrily?--but I?"

"To-night I saw you . . . I could see you," incoherently, "alone,

bereft of the friend you loved and who loved you. . . . I thought of

you as you faced them all that day! . . . How calm and brave you were!

. . . You said that some day you would force me to love you. You said

I was dishonest. I was, I was! But you could never force me to love

you, because . . . because. . . ." With a superb gesture of abandon

which swept aside all barriers, all hesitancies, all that hedging

convention which compels a woman to be silent, she said: "If you do not

immediately tell me that you still love me madly, I shall die of shame!"

"Diane!" He forced her hands from her burning face.

"Yes, yes; I love you, love you with all my soul; all, all! And I have

come to you this night in my shame, knowing that you would never have

come to me. Wait!" still pressing him back, for he was eager now to

make up in this exquisite moment all he had lost. "Oh, I tried to hate

you; lied to myself that I wanted nothing but to bring you to your

knees and then laugh at you. For each moment I have made you suffer I

have suffered an hour. Paul, Paul, can you love me still?"

He knelt, kissing her hands madly. "You are the breath of my life, the

coming of morning after a long night of darkness. Love you? With my

latest breath!"

"It was my heart you put your heel upon, for I loved you from the

moment I saw your miniature. Paul!" She bent her head till her cheek

rested upon his hair. "So many days have been wasted, so many days! I

have always loved you. Look!" The locket lay in her hand. The face

there was his own.

"And you come to me?" It was so difficult to believe. "Ah, but you

heard what the vicomte said that day?" a shade of gloom mingling with

the gladness on his face.