The light that had been in his face grew brighter still as she spoke, while she looked at him, wondering, her head thrown back against the high chair, her eyelids wet and drooping, her lips still parted, her hand in his.  Small wonder if he had loved her for herself, she was so beautiful.  Small wonder it would have been if she had taken Beatrice’s place in his heart during those weeks of close and daily converse.  But that first great love had left no fertile ground in which to plant another seed, no warmth of kindness under which the tender shoot might grow to strength, no room beneath its heaven for other branches than its own.  Alone it had stood in majesty as a lordly tree, straight, tall, and ever green, on a silent mountain top.  Alone it had borne the burden of grief’s heavy snows; unbent, for all its loneliness, it had stood against the raging tempest; and green still, in all its giant strength of stem and branch, in all its kingly robe of unwithered foliage.  Unscathed, unshaken, it yet stood.  Neither storm nor lightning, wind nor rain, sun nor snow had prevailed against it to dry it up and cast it down that another might grow in its place.

Yet this love was not for her to whom he spoke, and she knew it as she answered him, though she answered truly, from the fulness of her heart.  She had cast an enchantment over him unwittingly, and she was taken in the toils of her own magic even as she had sworn that she would never again put forth her powers.  She shuddered as she realised it all.  In a few short moments she had felt his kisses, and heard his words, and been clasped to his heart, as she had many a time madly hoped.  But in those moments, too, she had known the truth of her woman’s instinct when it had told her that love must be for herself and for her own sake, or not be love at all.

The falseness, the fathomless untruth of it, would have been bad enough alone.  But the truth that was so strong made it horrible.  Had she but inspired in him a burning love for herself, however much against his will, it would have been very different.  She would have heard her name from his lips, she would have known that all, however false, however artificial, was for herself, while it might last.  To know that it was real, and not for her, was intolerable.  To see this love of his break out at last—­this other love which she had dreaded, against which she had fought, which she had met with a jealousy as strong as itself, and struggled with and buried under an imposed forgetfulness—­to feel its great waves surging around her and beating up against her heart, was more than she could bear.  Her face grew whiter and her hands were cold.  She dreaded each moment lest he should call her Beatrice again, and say that her fair hair was black and that he loved those deep dark eyes of hers.