"Might, Valerie?" (I was never weary of repeating her sweet name; and what meant this admission, if she declined me?) "You do not doubt my love for you?" I urged. "No, though I fear it is but a passing fancy, born of idleness and the ennui of Yalta." "Think you, Valerie, that any man could see, and only love you thus? O no, no! But say that you will be mine--that you will come with me to England, where your brother is, or soon shall be--to England, where women are treated with a courtesy and tenderness all unknown in Russia, and where the girl a man loves is indeed as an empress to him, and has his fate in life in her own hands." "I don't quite understand all this--nor should I listen to it," said she, looking me fully in the face, with calm confidence and something of sadness; too. Her right hand was still clasped in mine, and as I pressed it against my heart, I placed my left arm round her waist, modestly, tenderly, and with a somewhat faltering manner; for she looked so stately, and in her white ermine seemed taller and more ample than usual, a beauty on a large scale and with "a presence." But starting back, she quickly freed herself from my half-embrace, and said, "Captain Hardinge, you forget yourself!" "Can it be that you receive my tenderness thus?" said I, reproachfully, and feeling alike disappointed and crestfallen. "I love you most dearly, Valerie, and implore you to tell me of my future, for on your answer depends my happiness or misery." "I hope that I am the holder of neither. I did not ask you to love me; and O, I would to Heaven that you had never come to Yalta--that we had never, never met!" "Why--O, why?" I asked, imploringly. "Because I am on the very eve of being _married_." "Married!" I repeated, breathlessly; and then added passionately and hoarsely, "To whom?" "Colonel Tolstoff, to whom I was betrothed in form by the Bishop of Odessa." Her refusal was really a double-shotted one, and for a moment I was stupefied. Then I said, in a voice I could scarcely have recognised as my own, "It was to this tie, and not to a convent, that Volhonski alluded, when hinting that you were set apart from the world?" "Yes. I thank you from my soul for the love you offer me, though it fills me with distress. I pity you; but can do no more. Alas! you have been here only too long." "Too long, indeed!" said I, sadly, while bending my lips to her hand; and then hurrying into the house by the picture-gallery, she left me--left me to my own miserable and crushing thoughts, with the additional mortification of knowing that Madame Tolstoff, watchful as a lynx, had overseen and overheard our interview from another angle of the terrace, though she could not understand its nature; but of course she suspected much, and was all aflame for the interests of her suave and amiable son.