"Darling, do you remember our talk in your sitting-room, and of the _coup de foudre_? Well, it has struck us both. Oh! I could curse myself! Your dear little white face looks up at me pathetically without a reproach, and I have been a selfish brute to even tell you I love you. I meant to be your friend and comrade that you might feel you had at least some one that would stand by you forever. I wanted to make your life pleasanter, and now my mad folly has spoiled it all, and you decree that we must part. Oh! my little Comtesse, my loving you has only been to hurt you!" "Oh no. It makes me glad to know it--only--only I cannot see you any more." "I would promise never to say another word that could disturb you. Oh! Why must we say good-bye?" "Because I could not promise not to wish you to say things. You must surely know if we went on meeting it could only have one end." "Well, I will do as you wish, my darling white rose. In my eyes you are above the angels." Antony's voice when it is moved could wile a bird from off a tree. Then I told him of my telegram, and I know he, too, felt glad that last night we had parted as we had. "Ambrosine, listen to me," he said, "I will not try to see you, but if you want anything in the world done for you, promise to let me do it." I promised. "There is just one thing I want to know," I said. "That day before my wedding, when you sent me the knife and the note saying it was not too late to cut the Gordian knot, what did you mean? Did you care for me, then?" "I do not know exactly what I meant. I was greatly attracted by you. That day we came over I very nearly said to you then, 'Come along away with me,' and then we never met again until your wedding. When I sent the knife I half wondered what you would say. I wrote the note half in joke, half in earnest. My principal feeling was that I could not bear you to marry Augustus. If we had chanced to meet then, really, I should have taken you off to Gretna Green." "Alas!" I said. The footman opened the door. We had arrived at the station. We did not travel in the same carriage going to London. We had agreed it would be better not. And I do not think any one, seeing Antony calmly handing me into the hired brougham Augustus had sent to me, would have guessed that we were parting forever, and that, to me at least, all joy in the world had fled. It is stupid to go on talking about one's feelings. Having cut off one's hand, I am sure grandmamma would say it would be drivelling and mawkish to meditate over each drop of blood. I tried hard to think of other things. I counted the stupid pattern on the braid that ornamented the inside of the brougham. I counted the lamp-posts, with their murky lights, showing through the fog. I looked at McGreggor sitting stolidly opposite me. Could any emotions happen to that wooden mask? "Have you a lover that you have said good-bye to forever, I wonder? And is that why your face is carved out of stone?" I said to myself.