Part 19

Gemma’s head sank, and she said nothing. The parasol slipped out of her hands. She hastily caught it before it dropped on the path.

“Ah, believe me! believe what I wrote to you!” cried Sanin; all his timidity suddenly vanished, he spoke with heat; “if there is truth on earth—sacred, absolute truth—it’s that I love, love you passionately, Gemma.”

She flung him a sideway, momentary glance, and again almost dropped the parasol.

“Believe me! believe me!” he repeated. He besought her, held out his hands to her, and did not dare to touch her. “What do you want me to do … to convince you?”

She glanced at him again.

“Tell me, Monsieur Dimitri,” she began; “the day before yesterday, when you came to talk to me, you did not, I imagine, know then … did not feel …”

“I felt it,” Sanin broke in; “but I did not know it. I have loved you from the very instant I saw you; but I did not realise at once what you had become to me! And besides, I heard that you were solemnly betrothed…. As far as your mother’s request is concerned—in the first place, how could I refuse?—and secondly, I think I carried out her request in such a way that you could guess….”

They heard a heavy tread, and a rather stout gentleman with a knapsack over his shoulder, apparently a foreigner, emerged from behind the clump, and staring, with the unceremoniousness of a tourist, at the couple sitting on the garden-seat, gave a loud cough and went on.

“Your mother,” Sanin began, as soon as the sound of the heavy footsteps had ceased, “told me your breaking off your engagement would cause a scandal”—Gemma frowned a little—that I was myself in part responsible for unpleasant gossip, and that … consequently … I was, to some extent, under an obligation to advise you not to break with your betrothed, Herr Klüber….”

“Monsieur Dimitri,” said Gemma, and she passed her hand over her hair on the side turned towards Sanin, “don’t, please, call Herr Klüber my betrothed. I shall never be his wife. I have broken with him.”

“You have broken with him? when?”

“Yesterday.”

“You saw him?”

“Yes. At our house. He came to see us.”

“Gemma? Then you love me?”

She turned to him.

“Should … I have come here, if not?” she whispered, and both her hands fell on the seat.

Sanin snatched those powerless, upturned palms, and pressed them to his eyes, to his lips…. Now the veil was lifted of which he had dreamed the night before! Here was happiness, here was its radiant form!

He raised his head, and looked at Gemma, boldly and directly. She, too, looked at him, a little downwards. Her half-shut eyes faintly glistened, dim with light, blissful tears. Her face was not smiling … no! it laughed, with a blissful, noiseless laugh.

He tried to draw her to him, but she drew back, and never ceasing to laugh the same noiseless laugh, shook her head. “Wait a little,” her happy eyes seemed to say.

“O Gemma!” cried Sanin: “I never dreamed that you would love me!”

“I did not expect this myself,” Gemma said softly.

“How could I ever have dreamed,” Sanin went on, “when I came to Frankfort, where I only expected to remain a few hours, that I should find here the happiness of all my life!”

“All your life? Really?” queried Gemma.

“All my life, for ever and ever!” cried Sanin with fresh ardour.

The gardener’s spade suddenly scraped two paces from where they were sitting.

“Let’s go home,” whispered Gemma: “we’ll go together—will you?”

If she had said to him at that instant “Throw yourself in the sea, will you?” he would have been flying headlong into the ocean before she had uttered the last word.