He sighed.

“No, Alresca,” I said, surmising that he referred to his own case, “not everything, surely?”

“You are right,” he replied.  “Even then it is not everything.  The human soul is unconquerable, even by love.  But, nevertheless, be warned.  Do not drive it late.  Ah!  Why should I not confess to you, now that all is over?  Carl, you are aware that I have loved deeply.  Can you guess what being in love meant to me?  Probably not.  I am aging now, but in my youth I was handsome, and I have had my voice.  Women, the richest, the cleverest, the kindest—­they fling themselves at such as me.  There is no vanity in saying so; it is the simple fact.  I might have married a hundred times; I might have been loved a thousand times.  But I remained—­as I was.  My heart slept like that of a young girl.  I rejected alike the open advances of the bold and the shy, imperceptible signals of the timid.  Women were not for me.  In secret I despised them.  I really believe I did.

“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.