Reader, I do not know what influence it was that overcame me in that
breathless hour of perplexity and indecision: whether it was the
fascination of her beauty; whether it was owing to the fact that I
unconsciously entertained some affection for her; or whether it was
because my sense of duty to my country urged me to endeavour to learn
the secret of the conspiracy formed against her by the Powers of Europe.
To-day, as I sit here writing down this strange chapter of secret
diplomacy, I cannot decide which of these three influences caused me to
throw my instinctive caution to the winds and keep the appointment in
the leafy forest glade that led through the beeches to Veneux Nadon and
on to quiet old Moret.
Instinctively I felt myself in danger--that if I allowed myself to
become fascinated by this capricious, impulsive woman, it would mean
ruin to us both. Yet her beauty was renowned through Europe, and the
illustrated papers seemed to vie with each other in publishing her new
portraits. Her confession to me had been sufficient to turn the head of
any man. Nevertheless, with a fixed determination not to allow myself
to fall beneath the fascination of those wonderful eyes, I strolled down
the forest-path and awaited her coming.
Soon she approached, walking over the mossy ground noiselessly, save for
the quick swish of her skirts; and then with a glad cry of welcome, she
grasped my hand.
"Ah!" she exclaimed, a slight flush mounting to her delicate,
well-moulded cheeks, "you received my note last night, Gerald? Can you
forgive me? I am a woman, and should not have written so."
"Forgive!" I repeated. "Of course I forgive you anything, Leonie."
"You think none the worse of me for it?" she urged, speaking rapidly in
French. "Indeed, I allowed my pen to run away, and now I regret it."
I breathed more freely. Her attitude was that of a woman who, conscious
of error, now wished it to be forgotten.
"To regret is quite unnecessary," I assured her in a low voice of
sympathy. "We are all of us human, and sometimes we err."
Silence fell between us for a few moments. It struck me that she was
striving strenuously to preserve her self-restraint.
"You will destroy that letter, promise me," she urged, looking
piercingly into my face. "It was foolish--very foolish--of me to write
it."
"I have done so," I answered, although, truth to tell, it still remained
in my pocket.
"And you will not despise me because in an hour of foolishness I
confessed my love for you?"
"I shall never despise you, Leonie," I answered. "We have always been
good friends, but never lovers. The latter we never shall be."
She looked at me quickly, with a strange expression.
"Never?" she asked, in a tone so low that I could scarcely catch the
word.
"Never," I responded.
Her laces stirred as her breast rose and fell, and I saw that she
herself was endeavouring to evade my query, although at the same time
her heart was full of the same impetuous passion which had so much
amazed me on the previous night. I had spoken plainly, and my single
word, uttered firmly, had crushed her.
It occurred to me that I had made a mistake. I had not acted
diplomatically. I knew, alas! that I was, and always had been, a
terrible blunderer in regard to women's affections. Some men are
unlucky in their love-affairs. I was one of them.
We walked slowly together side by side for some distance, neither
uttering a word. At last I halted again, and, taking her hand, bent
earnestly to her, saying:
"Now, Leonie, let us put aside any sentimentality and talk reasonably."
"Ah!" she said, her eyes flashing quickly, "you do not love me. Put
aside sentiment indeed! How can I put it aside?"
"But a moment ago you suggested that we should forget what passed
between us yesterday."
"I did so in order to test you--to see whether you had a spark of
affection for me in your heart. But the bare, cold truth is now
exposed. You have not!"
Her face was ashen, and her magnificent eyes had a strange look in them.
"Could you respect me and count me your friend, Leonie, if I feigned an
affection which did not really exist within me?" I asked. "Reason with
yourself for a moment. Had I been unscrupulous towards you I might
yesterday have told you that I reciprocated your affection, and--"
"And you do not?" she cried. "Tell me the truth plainly, once and for
all."
"You offered me in exchange for my love a secret which would enable me
to defeat the enemies of my country, and probably cause my advancement
in the diplomatic service. You offered me the greatest temptation
possible."
"No;" she said, putting up her hand, "do not use the word temptation."
"I will call it inducement, then. Well, this inducement was strong
enough to persuade me to break the bond of friendship between us, and to
cause me to occupy a false position. But I have hesitated, because--"
"Because you do not love me," she said quickly, interrupting me.
"No, Leonie," I protested. "Between us it is hard to define the exact
line where friendship ends and love begins. Our own discretion should
be able to define it. Tell me, which do you prefer--a firm friend--or a
false lover?"
"You are too coldly philosophical," she answered. "I only put it to you
from a common-sense standpoint."
"And which position is to be preferred?" she asked. "Your own, as that
of a diplomatist with a paltry fifty thousand francs or so a year, and
compelled to worry yourself over every trifling action of those who
represent the Courts of your enemies; or that of my husband, with an
income that would place you far above the necessity of allowing your
brain to be worried by everyday trifles?"
She paused, and her lips trembled. Then with a sudden desperate passion
she went on:
"People say that I am good-looking, and my mirror tells me so; yet you,
the man I love, can see in me no beauty that is attractive. To you I am
simply a smart woman who is at the same time a princess--that is all."
"I am no flatterer, Leonie," I cried quickly. "But as regards personal
beauty you are superb, incomparable. Remember what Vian said when he
painted your portrait for the Salon--that you were the only woman he had
ever painted whose features together made a perfect type of beauty."
"Ah! you remember that!" she said, smiling with momentary satisfaction.
"I thought you had forgotten it. I fear that my beauty is not what it
was five years ago."
"You are the same to-day as when we first met and were introduced. It
was at Longchamps. Do you remember?"
"Remember? I recollect every incident of that day," she answered. "You
have been ever in my mind since."
"As a friend, I hope."
"No, as a lover."
"Impossible," I declared. "Do reason for an instant, Leonie. At this
moment I am proud to count myself among your most intimate personal
friends, but love between us would only result in disaster. If we
married, the difference in our stations would be as irksome to you as to
me; and if I did not love you, the link would only cause us both
unhappiness, and, in a year or two, estrangement."
"Only if you did not love me. If you loved me it would be different."
"You would still be a princess and I a struggling diplomatist."
"It would make no difference. Our love would be the same," she answered
passionately. "Ah, Gerald, you cannot tell how very lonely my life is
without a single person to care for me! I think I am the most
melancholy woman in all the world. True, I have wealth, position, and
good looks, the three things that the world believes necessary for the
well-being of women; but I lack one--the most necessary of them all--the
affection of the man I love."
"I can't help it, Leonie!" I cried. "Indeed, it is not my fault that
my friendship does not overstep the bounds. Some day it may, but I tell
you frankly and honestly that at present it does not. I am your friend,
earnest and devoted to you--a friend such as few women have, perhaps.
Were I not actually your friend I should now, at this moment, become
selfish, feign love, and thus become your bitterest enemy."
"You are cold as ice," she answered hoarsely, in a low tone of
disappointment.
Her countenance fell, as though she were utterly crushed by my
straightforward declaration.
"No, you misunderstand," I replied, taking her hand tenderly in mine,
and speaking very earnestly. "To-day the romance that exists within the
breast of every woman is stirred within you, and causes you to utter the
same words as you did at sixteen, when your first love was, in your
eyes, a veritable god. You will recall those days--days when youth was
golden, and when the world seemed a world of unceasing sunshine and of
roses without thorns. But you, like myself, have obtained knowledge of
what life really is, and have become callous to so much that used to
impress and influence us in those long-past days. We have surely both
of us taught ourselves to pause and to reason."
She hung her head in silence, as if she w'ere a scolded child, her looks
fixed upon the ground.
"My refusal to mislead you into a belief that I love you is as painful
to me as it is to you, Leonie," I went on, still holding her hand in
mine. "I would do anything rather than cause you a moment's trouble and
unhappiness, but I am determined that I will not play you false. These
are plain, hard words, I know; but some day you will thank me for them--
you will thank me for refusing to entice you into a marriage which could
only bring unhappiness to both of us."
"I shall never thank you for breaking my heart," she said in a sad
voice, looking up at me. "You cannot know how I suffer, or you would
never treat me thus!"
"The truth is always hardest to speak," I answered, adding, in an
attempt to console her: "Let us end it all, and return to our old style
of friendship."
"I cannot!" she said, shaking her head--"I cannot!" and she burst into
tears.
I stood beside her in the forest-path, helpless and perplexed. Was it
possible, I wondered, that the plot of the Powers against England
existed only in her imagination, and that she had invented it in order
to use it as a lever to gain my affections? She was a clever,
resourceful woman--that I knew; but never during the course of our
friendship had I found her guilty of double-dealing or of attempting to
deceive me in any way whatever. More than once, when she reigned in
Paris as queen of Society, she had whispered to me secrets that had been
of the greatest use to us at the Embassy; and once, owing to her, we had
been forearmed against a dastardly attempt on the part of an enemy to
assist the Boers to defy us. A niece of the Emperor of Austria, she was
received at the various Courts of Europe, and visited several of the
reigning sovereigns; therefore, she was always full of such
tittle-tattle as is ever busy among those who live beneath the shadow of
a throne, and was far better informed as to political affairs than many
of the ambassadors; yet withal she was eminently cautious and discreet,
and, if she wished, could be as silent as the grave. Nevertheless,
although signs were many that the war-cloud had again arisen and was
once more hanging heavily over Europe, I could not bring myself to
believe that the plot now hatched was quite as serious as she made it
out to be. The world of diplomacy in Paris is full of mares' nests, and
alarms are almost of daily occurrence. When events do not conspire to
create them, then those ingenious gentlemen, the Paris correspondents of
the great journals, sit down and invent them. The centre of diplomatic
Europe is Paris, which is also the centre of the canards, those
ingeniously concocted stories which so often throw half Europe into
alarm, and for which the sensational journalists alone are responsible.
"Come, Leonie," I said tenderly at last, "this is no time for tears. I
regret exceedingly that this interview is so painful, but it is my duty
towards you as a man and as your friend to be firm in preventing you
from taking a step which after a short time you would bitterly repent."
"If you become my husband I shall never repent!" she cried. "You are
the only man I have ever loved. I did not love the Prince as I love
you! I know," she added, panting--"I know how unseemly it is that I, a
woman, should utter these words; but my heart is full, and my pent-up
feelings are now revenging themselves for their long imprisonment."
I felt myself wavering. This woman who had thrown herself into my arms,
was wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, world-renowned for her
beauty and high intellect--a woman altogether worthy and noble. Each
moment her powers of fascination grew stronger, and I felt that, after
all, I was treating her affection with slight regard, for I was now
convinced that her love was no mere caprice or sudden passion.
Yet, after all, my belief in woman's honesty and purity had been shaken
by the discovery that Yolande was a spy and that Edith, after all her
protestations, had a secret lover. These two facts caused me, I think,
to regard the Princess with some suspicion, although at the same time I
could not disguise from myself the truth that her emotion was real and
her passion genuine.
"Your confession is but the confession of an honest woman, Leonie," I
said with tenderness. "But what has passed between us must be
forgotten. You tempt me to assume a position that I could not maintain.
Think for a moment. Is it right? Is it just either to yourself or to
me?"
"Will you not accept the offer I made you yesterday?" she asked in the
tone of one desperate, her eyes fixed upon mine in fierce earnestness.
"Will you not learn the secret and save your country from ignominy?"
I held my breath, and my eyes fixed themselves on hers. Her
tear-stained face was blanched to the lips.
"No, Leonie," I answered. "Anxious as I am to save England from the net
which her unscrupulous enemies have spread for her, I refuse to do so at
the cost of your happiness."
"And that decision is irrevocable?" she asked, with a quick look of
menace.
"It is irrevocable," I replied.
"Yes, I know," she said in a hoarse whisper--"because another woman
holds you in her toils! Well, we shall see!" and she laughed bitterly,
the swift fire of jealousy flashing for an instant in the brilliant eyes
that half Europe had delighted to praise. "I love you," she continued,
"and some day you will love me. Meanwhile, my secret is my own."