in this instance the intense
whisper of these words seemed to form itself right in my very heart; not
as a conveyed sound but as an imparted emotion vibrating there with an
awful intimacy of delight. And yet it left my heart heavy.

"Oh, yes, for joy," I said bitterly but very low; "for your Royalist,
Legitimist, joy." Then with that trick of very precise politeness which
I must have caught from Mr. Blunt I added:

"I don't want to be embraced--for the King."

And I might have stopped there. But I didn't. With a perversity which
should be forgiven to those who suffer night and day and are as if drunk
with an exalted unhappiness, I went on: "For the sake of an old cast-off
glove; for I suppose a disdained love is not much more than a soiled,
flabby thing that finds itself on a private rubbish heap because it has
missed the fire."

She listened to me unreadable, unmoved, narrowed eyes, closed lips,
slightly flushed face, as if carved six thousand years ago in order to
fix for ever that something secret and obscure which is in all women.
Not the gross immobility of a Sphinx proposing roadside riddles but the
finer immobility, almost sacred, of a fateful figure seated at the very
source of the passions that have moved men from the dawn of ages.

Captain Blunt, with his elbow on the high mantelpiece, had turned away a
little from us and his attitude expressed excellently the detachment of a
man who does not want to hear. As a matter of fact, I don't suppose he
could have heard. He was too far away, our voices were too contained.
Moreover, he didn't want to hear. There could be no doubt about it; but
she addressed him unexpectedly.

"As I was saying to you, Don Juan, I have the greatest difficulty in
getting myself, I won't say understood, but simply believed."

No pose of detachment could avail against the warm waves of that voice.
He had to hear. After a moment he altered his position as it were
reluctantly, to answer her.

"That's a difficulty that women generally have."

"Yet I have always spoken the truth."

"All women speak the truth," said Blunt imperturbably. And this annoyed
her.

"Where are the men I have deceived?" she cried.

"Yes, where?" said Blunt in a tone of alacrity as though he had been
ready to go out and look for them outside.

"No! But show me one. I say--where is he?"

He threw his affectation of detachment to the winds, moved his shoulders
slightly, very slightly, made a st