Her Majesty's Minister

“Forgive!” I repeated. “Of course I forgive you anything, Léonie.”

“You think none the worse of me for it?” she urged, speaking rapidly in French. “Indeed, I allowed my pen to run away, and now I regret it.”

I breathed more freely. Her attitude was that of a woman who, conscious of error, now wished it to be forgotten.

“To regret is quite unnecessary,” I assured her in a low voice of sympathy. “We are all of us human, and sometimes we err.”

Silence fell between us for a few moments. It struck me that she was striving strenuously to preserve her self-restraint.

“You will destroy that letter, promise me,” she urged, looking piercingly into my face. “It was foolish – very foolish – of me to write it.”

“I have done so,” I answered, although, truth to tell, it still remained in my pocket.

“And you will not despise me because in an hour of foolishness I confessed my love for you?”

“I shall never despise you, Léonie,” I answered. “We have always been good friends, but never lovers. The latter we never shall be.”

She looked at me quickly, with a strange expression.

“Never?” she asked, in a tone so low that I could scarcely catch the word.

“Never,” I responded.

Her laces stirred as her breast rose and fell, and I saw that she herself was endeavouring to evade my query, although at the same time her heart was full of the same impetuous passion which had so much amazed me on the previous night. I had spoken plainly, and my single word, uttered firmly, had crushed her.

It occurred to me that I had made a mistake. I had not acted diplomatically. I knew, alas! that I was, and always had been, a terrible blunderer in regard to women’s affections. Some men are unlucky in their love-affairs. I was one of them.

We walked slowly together side by side for some distance, neither uttering a word. At last I halted again, and, taking her hand, bent earnestly to her, saying:

“Now, Léonie, let us put aside any sentimentality and talk reasonably.”

“Ah!” she said, her eyes flashing quickly, “you do not love me. Put aside sentiment indeed! How can I put it aside?”

“But a moment ago you suggested that we should forget what passed between us yesterday.”

“I did so in order to test you – to see whether you had a spark of affection for me in your heart. But the bare, cold truth is now exposed. You have not!”

Her face was ashen, and her magnificent eyes had a strange look in them.

“Could you respect me and count me your friend, Léonie, if I feigned an affection which did not really exist within me?” I asked. “Reason with yourself for a moment. Had I been unscrupulous towards you I might yesterday have told you that I reciprocated your affection, and – ”

“And you do not?” she cried. “Tell me the truth plainly, once and for all.”

“You offered me in exchange for my love a secret which would enable me to defeat the enemies of my country, and probably cause my advancement in the diplomatic service. You offered me the greatest temptation possible.”

“No;” she said, putting up her hand, “do not use the word temptation.”

“I will call it inducement, then. Well, this inducement was strong enough to persuade me to break the bond of friendship between us, and to cause me to occupy a false position. But I have hesitated, because – ”

“Because you do not love me,” she said quickly, interrupting me.

“No, Léonie,” I protested. “Between us it is hard to define the exact line where friendship ends and love begins. Our own discretion should be able to define it. Tell me, which do you prefer – a firm friend – or a false lover?”

“You are too coldly philosophical,” she answered. “I only put it to you from a common-sense standpoint.”

“And which position is to be preferred?” she asked. “Your own, as that of a diplomatist with a paltry fifty thousand francs or so a year, and compelled to worry yourself over every trifling action of those who represent the Courts of your enemies; or that of my husband, with an income that would place you far above the necessity of allowing your brain to be worried by everyday trifles?”

She paused, and her lips trembled. Then with a sudden desperate passion she went on:

“People say that I am good-looking, and my mirror tells me so; yet you, the man I love, can see in me no beauty that is attractive. To you I am simply a smart woman who is at the same time a princess – that is all.”

“I am no flatterer, Léonie,” I cried quickly. “But as regards personal beauty you are superb, incomparable. Remember what Vian said when he painted your portrait for the Salon – that you were the only woman he had ever painted whose features together made a perfect type of beauty.”

“Ah! you remember that!” she said, smiling with momentary satisfaction. “I thought you had forgotten it. I fear that my beauty is not what it was five years ago.”

“You are the same to-day as when we first met and were introduced. It was at Longchamps. Do you remember?”

“Remember? I recollect every incident of that day,” she answered. “You have been ever in my mind since.”

“As a friend, I hope.”

“No, as a lover.”

“Impossible,” I declared. “Do reason for an instant, Léonie. At this moment I am proud to count myself among your most intimate personal friends, but love between us would only result in disaster. If we married, the difference in our stations would be as irksome to you as to me; and if I did not love you, the link would only cause us both unhappiness, and, in a year or two, estrangement.”

“Only if you did not love me. If you loved me it would be different.”

“You would still be a princess and I a struggling diplomatist.”

“It would make no difference. Our love would be the same,” she answered passionately. “Ah, Gerald, you cannot tell how very lonely my life is without a single person to care for me! I think I am the most melancholy woman in all the world. True, I have wealth, position, and good looks, the three things that the world believes necessary for the well-being of women; but I lack one – the most necessary of them all – the affection of the man I love.”

“I can’t help it, Léonie!” I cried. “Indeed, it is not my fault that my friendship does not overstep the bounds. Some day it may, but I tell you frankly and honestly that at present it does not. I am your friend, earnest and devoted to you – a friend such as few women have, perhaps. Were I not actually your friend I should now, at this moment, become selfish, feign love, and thus become your bitterest enemy.”

“You are cold as ice,” she answered hoarsely, in a low tone of disappointment.

Her countenance fell, as though she were utterly crushed by my straightforward declaration.

“No, you misunderstand,” I replied, taking her hand tenderly in mine, and speaking very earnestly. “To-day the romance that exists within the breast of every woman is stirred within you, and causes you to utter the same words as you did at sixteen, when your first love was, in your eyes, a veritable god. You will recall those days – days when youth was golden, and when the world seemed a world of unceasing sunshine and of roses without thorns. But you, like myself, have obtained knowledge of what life really is, and have become callous to so much that used to impress and influence us in those long-past days. We have surely both of us taught ourselves to pause and to reason.”

She hung her head in silence, as if she w’ere a scolded child, her looks fixed upon the ground.

“My refusal to mislead you into a belief that I love you is as painful to me as it is to you, Léonie,” I went on, still holding her hand in mine. “I would do anything rather than cause you a moment’s trouble and unhappiness, but I am determined that I will not play you false. These are plain, hard words, I know; but some day you will thank me for them – you will thank me for refusing to entice you into a marriage which could only bring unhappiness to both of us.”

“I shall never thank you for breaking my heart,” she said in a sad voice, looking up at me. “You cannot know how I suffer, or you would never treat me thus!”

“The truth is always hardest to speak,” I answered, adding, in an attempt to console her: “Let us end it all, and return to our old style of friendship.”

“I cannot!” she said, shaking her head – “I cannot!” and she burst into tears.