She took his arm and he piloted her skilfully through the crowd and round the corridor to an empty box, where he set a chair for her with its back to the house, and closed the door. She paused a moment to rearrange her hood and sat down; Angelescu took a chair facing her. There was a moment's embarrassed silence, then Angelescu moistened his lips and began. "I do not exactly know how to put what I have to say, it is very difficult for me. A certain person asked me to come here on his behalf--" "Then you know--all?" "Is it true?" She bowed her head. "It is?" "Yes." A groan escaped him. "Oh, the infernal blackguard! I would not believe it until I had heard it from your own lips. Oh, why was I not in time--I might have saved you! And now it is too late." Ragna was silent. "But that is not the message I was told to deliver. He wishes to offer you compensation,--any sum you care to name." "Compensation! To me!" Ragna half rose from her chair. "Wait! wait! I beg of you! It is an insult, I know that--but it is not from me, it is an order. I had to get it over! Oh, don't!" Ragna had dropped her face in her hands and was weeping as though her heart were broken, but the tears were of rage rather than of grief. "Compensation! How dare he!" "Listen, Mademoiselle, listen! Ragna, don't cry like that! Listen to what I have to say to you! That was my official message, but this is what I really come to say." His face was pale and his eyes blazed. "Ragna I have loved you ever since we first met,--I love you still--" She interrupted him with an hysterical laugh. "What, you too! This is too funny!" "Ragna, don't! I love you--" "Don't talk to me about love, I have learned what that means!" She now sat stiffly, her head held upright. "Poor child," he said gravely, "my love is not of that kind, I want to marry you, Ragna." "But you don't understand," she cried, "surely you can't know, or you would not say that!" "I do know," he said, still very gravely, "I know all, and because I realize that you are a victim, because I love you really and want to have the power to protect you, I ask you plainly: will you be my wife?" She smiled cynically. It was too much. In the light of her terrible disillusionment she could not understand the sincerity of the man. Her whole world had fallen in ruins about her and the dust of her broken idol obscured her vision. Angelescu had made the fatal mistake of delivering Mirko's message, and Ragna having found one man so utterly vile, could not, for the moment, believe generosity or magnanimity possible in any other. "He thinks it would be convenient to have me married to his aide," she thought. "Find the girl a husband, and all is comfortably arranged!" She despised Angelescu for lending himself to such a scheme. "I think not, thank you," she said in a hard voice. "You are in love with him?" "Love him? I despise him!"