Count Branciani started. Now he
understood what she had done, and why she had done it. 'Ask for the
charge that makes me a prisoner,' he said. Her husband's noble face gave
her a chill of alarm. The Austrian spoke. 'He is accused of being the
chief of the Sequin Club.' And then the Countess looked at her husband;
she sank at his feet. My heart breaks. Wilfrid! Wilfrid! You will not
wear that uniform? Say 'Never, never!' You will not go to the Austrian
army--Wilfrid? Would you be my enemy? Brutes, knee-deep in blood! with
bloody fingers! Ogres! Would you be one of them? To see me turn my head
shivering with loathing as you pass? This is why I sent for you, because
I loved you, to entreat you, Wilfrid, from my soul, not to blacken the
dear happy days when I knew you! Will you hear me? That woman is
changeing you--doing all this. Resist her! Think of me in this one thing!
Promise it, and I will go at once, and want no more. I will swear never
to trouble you. Oh, Wilfrid it's not so much our being enemies, but what
you become, I think of. If I say to myself, 'He also, who was once my
lover--Oh! paid murderer of my dear people!'"

Emilia threw up both hands to her eyes: but Wilfrid, all on fire with a
word, made one of her hands his own, repeating eagerly: "Once? once?"

"Once?" she echoed him.

"'Once my love?'" said he. "Not now?--does it mean, 'not now?' My
darling!--pardon me, I must say it. My beloved! you said: 'He who was
once my lover:'--you said that. What does it mean? Not that--not--? does
it mean, all's over? Why did you bring me here? You know I must love you
forever. Speak! 'Once?'"

"'Once?'" Emilia was breathing quick, but her voice was well contained:
"Yes, I said 'once.' You were then."

"Till that night in Devon?

"Let it be."

"But you love me still?"

"We won't speak of it."

"I see! You cannot forgive. Good heavens! I think I remember your saying
so once--Once! Yes, then: you said it then, during our 'Once;' when I
little thought you would be merciless to me--who loved you from the
first! the very first! I love you now! I wake up in the night, thinking I
hear your voice. You haunt me. Cruel! cold!--who guards you and watches
over you but the man you now hate? You sit there as if you could make
yourself stone when you pleased. Did I not chastise that man Pericles
publicly because he spoke a single lie of you? And by that act I have
made an enemy to our house who may crush us in ruin. Do I regr