She tried to throw herself upon his breast, but as he recoiled, astonished and infinitely pained, she fell on her knees at his feet, and clasped his hand in both of hers, and kissed and cried over it.
“I love you,” she repeated; “and you—you have loved me—you must have loved me—a little. No man was ever so kind as you have been, except for love’s sake. You must have cared for me. You cared for me that day in Venice—the happiest day in my life. Your heart turned to me as my heart turned to you, in the sunshine on the lagoon, in the evening at the theatre. Every day that I have lived since then has strengthened my love. For God’s sake, don’t tell me that I am nothing to you.”
“You are very much to me, Lisa. You are a friend for whom I desire all good things that this world and the world that comes after death can give. Get off your knees, child. This is childish folly; no wiser than Paolo’s anger when you won’t let him have all his own way. Come, Si’ora mia, let us laugh and be friends.”
He tried to make light of her feelings; but she gave him a look that frightened him, a look of unmitigated despair.
“I thought you loved me; that by-and-by, when I was a famous singer, you would marry me. I should be good enough then to be your wife. You would forget that I was once a poor working girl at Burano. But I was foolish; yes, foolish. I could never be good enough to be your wife—I, the mother of Paolo. Let me go on loving you. Only come to see me sometimes—once a week, perhaps! The weeks are so long when you don’t come. Only care for me a little, just a little, and I shall be happy. See how little I am asking. Don’t forsake me, don’t abandon me.”
“There is nothing further from my thoughts than to forsake you; but if you make scenes of this kind I can never trust myself to come here again,” he answered sternly.
“You will never come here again!” she cried, looking at him with wild eyes. “Then I will not live without you; I cannot, I will not.”
The window stood open with its balcony and flowers, and the sunlit river, and the sunlit park and dim blue horizon of housetops and chimneys stretching away to the hills of Sydenham. The girl looked at him for a moment, clenched her teeth, clenched her hands, and made a rush for the balcony. Happily he was quick enough and strong enough to stop her with one outstretched arm. He took her by the shoulder, savagely almost, with something of the brutal roughness of her old lover it might be, but with no love. Beautiful as she was in her passionate self-abandonment, he felt nothing for her in that moment but an angry contempt, which he was at little pains to conceal.
The revulsion of feeling upon that wild impulse towards self-destruction came quickly enough. The tears rolled down her flushed cheeks, she sank into the chair towards which Vansittart led her, and sat, helpless and unresisting, with her hands hanging loose across the arms of the chair, her head drooping on her breast, the picture of helpless grief.
He could but pity her, seeing her so childlike, so unreasoning, swayed by passion as a lily is bent by the wind. He shut the window, and bolted it, against any second outbreak; and then he seated himself at Lisa’s side and took one of those listless hands in his.
“Let us be reasonable, Si’ora,” he said, “and let us be good friends always. If I were not in love with a young English lady whom I hope very shortly to make my wife I might have fallen in love with you.”
She gave a melancholy smile, and then a deep sigh.
“No, no, impossible! You would never have cared. I am too low—the mother of Paolo—only fit to be your servant.”
“Love pardons much, Lisa; and if my heart had not been given to another your beauty and your generous nature might have won me. Only my heart was gone before that night at Covent Garden. It belonged forever and forever to my dear English love.”
“Your English love! I should like to see her”—with a moody look. “Is she handsome, much handsomer than I?”
“There are some people who would think you the lovelier. Beauty is not all in all, Lisa. We love because we love.”
“ ‘We love because we love,’ ” she repeated slowly. “Ah, that is what makes it so hard. We cannot help ourselves. Love is destiny.”
“Your destiny was in the past, Lisa. It came to you at Burano.”
“No, no, no. I never cared for him as I have cared for you. I was happier in that one day on the Lido, and that one evening in Venice, than in all my life with him. There was more music in your voice when you spoke to me, ever so lightly, than in all he ever said to me of love. You are my destiny.”
“You will think the same about someone else by-and-by, Si’ora—someone whose heart will be free to love you as you deserve to be loved. You are so young and so pretty and so clever that you must needs win a love worth the winning by-and-by, if you will only be reasonable and live a tranquil, self-respecting life in the meanwhile.”
She shook her head hopelessly.
“I shall never care for anyone again,” she said. “No other voice would ever sound sweet in my ears. Don’t despise me; don’t think of me as a shameless creature. I was mad just now. I should never have spoken as I did; but I thought you cared for me. You were so kind; you did so much for us.”
“I have tried to do my duty, that
