Page:In the name of a woman (1900).djvu/193

 me, that thought is not my least grief in this. If I were only a woman," she cried, with a deep sigh.

Her words and tenderness almost unmanned me. I had no words to reply, but stood still, holding her hands in mine and meeting her gaze with glances that spoke the love I felt.

"I have no thought but for your happiness," I murmured at length.

"Happiness?" she whispered; and her eyes closed an instant as she drew a deep breath as of unbearable pain. Then she mastered her emotion. "I must never see you alone again, Count. I ought not to have seen you now, but—I am a woman. I felt I must thank you once alone, and tell you how it wounds me to wound you thus. Others may think of me as ambitious, cold, unwomanly, selling myself for a throne, a heartless creature without the attributes and qualities of my sex. But you will know the truth. You must know it, even if I bare my inmost heart in telling you. You will not think ill of me, though I have made you so poor a requital for all that you have done and would do for me. Do you think I am seeking my happiness in this?"

"Forgive me that word. If I know what you are suffering in this it is because my own heart tells me; and I dare not utter all that it tells me."

"You are a strong man and will fight it down."

"I shall never forget," I cried earnestly, my voice hoarse with passion. "And never again so long as my heart beats will it hold a feeling such as that which fills it now."

This pleased her, and she smiled sweetly and tenderly, while the clasp of her fingers tightened on mine.

"Would God it could have gone otherwise for us,"