Helene kept up a continual
flow of small talk, of which he heard not a syllable. Rising hurriedly,
her long train caught in a low branch that stretched across the walk,
and he bent to extricate it.
"How is it that you dare to touch the hem of my garment?" she demanded
laughingly.
"Oh, I can dare more than that," he cried. The conviction that she
loved him, as indeed she did, gave him a sort of desperate courage. He
took her in his arms and held her close, kissing her passionately on
lips and eyes and soft white shoulders. She neither moved nor spoke,
but stood, when he released her, confronting him with a sort of
frigid, fascinated stare. "Oh, what have I done? Helene," he exclaimed
tremblingly. "I thought you loved me."
"_I_?" she questioned with haughty disdain, "_love_?" she demanded
with incredulous contempt, "_you_?"
The concentrated fires of her wrath and scorn were heaped upon this
final monosyllable. Every word was a fierce insulting interrogation.
Surely the traditional "three sweet words" had never before been
uttered with such tragic effect. She stood before him a living statue
of outraged pride, clothed in a fiery robe of righteous indignation;
then she turned and passed out of his sight, leaving the young man to
his reflections.
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