"Let me sigh for it with you. Perhaps together we may bring it down." There was something very pleasing in the quality of his tone. "Ah, it is you, Count? I could not see. But let us not sigh for the moon; it would be useless. Does any one get his own wish-moon? Does it not always hang so high, so far away?" "The music has affected you?" "As it always does. When I hear a voice like madam's, I grow sad, and a pity for the great world surges over me." "Pity is the invisible embrace which enfolds all animate things. There is pity for the wretched, for the fool, for the innocent knave, for those who are criminals by their own folly; pity for those who love without reward; pity that embraces ... even me." Silence. "Has it ever occurred to you that there are two beings in each of us; that between these two there is a continual conflict, and that the victor finally prints the victory on the face? For what lines and haggards a man's face but the victory of the evil that is in him? For what makes the aged ruddy and smooth of face and clear of eye but the victory of the good that is in him? It is so. I still love you; I still have the courage to ask you to be my wife. Shall there be faces haggard or ruddy, lined or smooth?" She stepped inside. She did not comprehend all he said, and his face was in the shadow--that is to say, unreadable. "I am sorry, very, very sorry." "How easily you say that!" "No, not easily; if only you knew how hard it comes, for I know that it inflicts a hurt,"--gently. "Ah, Count, why indeed do I not love you?"--impulsively, for at that time she held him in genuine regard. "You represent all that a woman could desire in a man." "You could learn,"--with an eager step toward her. "You do not believe that; you know that you do not. Love has nothing to learn; the heart speaks, and that is all. My heart does not speak when I see you, and I shall never marry a man to whom it does not. You ask for something which I can not give, and each time you ask you only add to the pain." "This is finality?" "It is." "Eh, well; then I must continue on to the end." She interpreted this as a plaint of his coming loneliness. "Here!" she said. She held in her hands two red roses. She thrust one toward him. "That is all I may give you." For a moment he hesitated. There were thorns, invisible and stinging. "Take it!" He accepted it, kissed it gravely, and hid it. "This is the bitterest moment in my life, and doubly bitter because I love you."