"Then--and it is not yet two years ago--I met her whom you know. And
I--I the scorner, fell in love. All my pride, my self-assurance
crumbled into ruin about me, and left me naked to the torment of an
unrequited passion. I could not credit the depth of my misfortune, and
at first it was impossible for me to believe that she was serious in
refusing me. But she had the right. She was an angel, and I only a
man. She was the most beautiful woman in the world."
"She was--she is," I said.
He laughed easily.
"She is," he repeated. "But she is nothing to me. I admire her beauty
and her goodness, that is all. She refused me. Good! At first I
rebelled against my fate, then I accepted it." And he repeated: "Then
I accepted it."
I might have made some reply to his flattering confidences, but I
heard some one walk quickly across the foot-path outside and through
the wide entrance porch. In another moment the door of the salon was
thrown open, and a figure stood radiant and smiling in the doorway.
The antechamber had already been lighted, and the figure was
silhouetted against the yellow radiance.
"So you are here, and I have found you, all in the dark!"
Alresca turned his head.
"Rosa!" he cried in bewilderment, put out his arms, and then drew them
sharply back again.
It was Rosetta. She ran towards us, and shook hands with kind
expressions of greeting, and our eyes followed her as she moved about,
striking matches and applying them to candles. Then she took off her
hat and veil.
"There! I seemed to know the house," she said. "Immediately I had
entered the courtyard I felt that there was a corridor running to the
right, and at the end of that corridor some steps and a landing and a
door, and on the other side of that door a large drawing-room. And
so, without ringing or waiting for the faithful Alexis, I came in."
"And what brings you to Bruges, dear lady?" asked Alresca.
"Solicitude for your health, dear sir," she replied, smiling. "At
Bayreuth I met that quaint person, Mrs. Sullivan Smith, who told me
that you were still here with Mr. Foster; and to-day, as I was
travelling from Cologne to Ostend, the idea suddenly occurred to me to
spend one night at Bruges, and make inquiries into your condition--and
that of Mr. Foster. You know the papers have been publishing the most
contradictory accounts."
"Have they indeed?" laughed Alresca.
But I could see that he was nervous and not at ease. For myself, I
was, it must be confessed, enchanted to see Rosa again, and so
unexpectedly, and it was amazingly nice of her to include myself in
her inquiries, and yet I divined that it would have been better if she
had never come. I had a sense of some sort of calamity.