He gave a little bow with a few murmured words that she did not catch.
"Your novel interested me," she went on, still stroking the hound, as
if the nearness of the great beast helped her.
"As a rule novels bore me, the subjects they deal with have been of no
interest to me, but this one gripped me. It is unusual, it is
wonderful, but--is it real?" She had spoken dispassionately with the
boyish candour that was characteristic, not complimenting an author on
a masterpiece, but stating a fact simply, as it appeared to her.
Saint Hubert leaned forward over the back of his chair. "In what
way--real?" he asked.
She looked at him squarely. "Do you think there really exists such a
man as you have drawn--a man who could be as tender, as unselfish, as
faithful as your hero?"
Saint Hubert looked away, and, picking up his pen, stabbed idly at the
blotting-pad, drawing meaningless circles and dots, with a slow shrug.
The scorn in her voice and the sudden pain in her eyes hurt him.
"Do you know such a man, Monsieur, or is he wholly a creature of your
imagination?" she persisted.
He completed a complicated diagram on the sheet of blotting-paper
before answering. "I do know a man who, given certain circumstances,
has the ability to develop into such a character," he said eventually
in a low voice.
She laughed bitterly. "Then you are luckier than I. I am not very old,
but during the last five years I have met many men of many
nationalities, and I have never known one who in any degree resembles
the preux chevalier of your book. The men who have most
intimately touched my life have not known the meaning of the word
tenderness, and have never had a thought for any one beyond themselves.
You have been more fortunate in your acquaintances, Monsieur."
A dull red crept into the Vicomte's face, and he continued looking at
the pen in his fingers. "Beautiful women, Madame," he said slowly,
"unfortunately provoke in some men all that is basest and vilest in
their natures. No man knows to what depths of infamy he may stoop under
the stress of a sudden temptation."
"And the woman pays," cried Diana vehemently. "Pays for the beauty God
curses her with--the beauty she may hate herself; pays until the beauty
fades. How much----" She pulled herself up short, biting her lips.
Moved by the sense of the sympathy that had unconsciously been
influencing her during the past week and which had shaken the
self-suppression that she had imposed upon herself, her tongue had run
away with her. She was afraid of the confidence that his manner was
almost demanding of her. Her pride restrained her from the compassion
that her loneliness had nearly yielded to.