now I know that one must not
play with fire unless one is willing to be burned. I did not know it
then. I was a stupid, unhappy, trembling child, full of poetic fancies,
and alone in a dissolute crowd. When you could not make me what you
wished to make me, I seemed very tame and useless to you. You turned to
more facile women, no doubt, and you left Russia."

"I left Russia under orders; and I wrote to you. I wrote to you
repeatedly. You never answered."

"No; I had no wish to answer you. I had seen you as you were, and the
veil had fallen from my eyes. I burnt your letters as they came to me.
But after the death of Prince Sabaroff you were careful to write no
more."

Gervase colors hotly; there is an accent in the words which makes them
strike him like whips.

"If you had written to me after that," she continues, "perhaps I should
have answered you; perhaps not: I cannot tell. When you knew that I was
set free you were silent; you stayed away, I know not where. I never saw
you again; I never heard from you again. Now I thank you for your
neglect and oblivion, but at the time I confess that it made me suffer.
I was very young still, and romantic. For a while I expected every month
which melted the snow would bring you back. So much I admit, though it
will flatter you."

It does not flatter him as she says it; rather it wounds him. He has a
hateful sense of his own impotency to stir her one hand's breadth, to
breathe one spark of warmth into those ashes gone cold forever.

"I do not think," she continues, "that I ever loved you in the sense
that women can love; but you had the power to make me suffer, to feel
your oblivion, to remember you when you had forgotten me. When I went
into the world again I heard of your successes with others, and
gradually I came to see you in your true light, and, almost, the drunken
brutality of Prince Sabaroff seemed to me a manlier thing than your
half-hearted and shallow erotics had been. Now, when we meet again by
pure hazard in the same country house, you do me the honor to offer me
your hand after eight years. I can only say, as I have said before, that
it is seven years too late!"

"Too late, only because Lord Brandolin now is everything to you."

"Lord Brandolin may possibly be something to me in the future. But, if
Lord Brandolin did not exist, if no other living man existed, be sure
that it would make no difference to me--or to you."

"Is that your last word?"

"Yes."