"I should like to paint you there, just as you are; you would make a delightful study with the reflected light on your white dress and the harmony of your golden hair and the blue cushion and the green shutters beyond in that half light. You should have some of the gardenias on the table by you, though, instead of those pink flowers, to make the colour scheme perfect--all green and blue and cool with the one relieving note of your hair." He paused close beside her. "Your hair is the most beautiful I have ever seen--so fine, so silky--so much of it, and such a rare shade, like moonlight on gold!" He lifted a shining strand, drawing it through his fingers with a sort of voluptuous pleasure, then he raised it to his lips. Ragna shrank away from him, a half-frightened look in her eyes. He laid a hand on her shoulder, compelling her glance.

"I love you. Surely you know that, you must have seen it?"

"Don't," she said faintly, "you must not say that!"

"And why not, Ragna cara?" he asked sinking to one knee and pushing aside the chair he had occupied.

"Don't!" she repeated, drawing back as far as she could.

"Ragna, you know that I love you," he insisted. "I love you, I loved you before you went to Venice! Do you not remember I told you that you would come back--to me? And you have, carissima! I think you love me too, is it not so?"

"I don't, I can't!" she answered wildly. "Oh, Signor Valentini, you don't know--I have no right to love anyone or to let anyone love me!"

"Why not, dear?" he asked and tried to take possession of her hands but she resisted him. "I love you, and I want to marry you."

"Oh, please don't, Signor Valentini! We have been such good friends, please don't spoil it!"

"We have been friends, yes, but we shall be more than friends."

"No! no! That can never be!"

"Why do you say that?"

"Oh, don't ask me! I can't! It is quite impossible; and besides I don't love you in that way."

"But I love you!"

"I tell you it is impossible."

"But why should it be impossible? I love you, you are more to me than my life,--I can't live without you. You must be my wife or--" He made a gesture of utter despair, "Ragna, dearest, you must be mine or my life is finished."

"Signor Valentini, you must not talk like this--it is quite impossible."

"But why?"

Ragna closed her eyes wearily and drew a long breath. The moment she dreaded had come, and so suddenly that she found herself unprepared. She still tried to gain time.

"Because--because I cannot marry anyone. But it should be enough that I do not love you."

"But I will marry you without that and trust to the future."

"I tell you it is impossible for me to marry anyone."

He rose to his feet and stood looking down at her searchingly. She turned uneasily under his gaze, and reddened, her fan slipped from her knees to the floor.

"Ragna," he said reproachfully, "what is it? Cannot you tell me? I am not like other men, I love you for yourself alone, you can tell me anything, anything,--nothing would change my feeling for you. Have I not been a good friend? Have I not earned the right to your confidence? Tell me all, dear,--you owe me at least an explanation of your refusal."

Ragna obstinately kept the lids lowered over her eyes; she twisted and untwisted her fingers in silent agony.

"Tell me, dear," he plead.

She looked up at him piteously. "Why do you insist? Don't you see that you are hurting me?"

"You have said too much or too little," he answered. "In justice to me and to yourself you should take me into your confidence."

She sat up, a dull flush spreading over her face. "Since you will know then, it is this: I am going to have a child." She sank back, covering her face with her hands.

"Ragna!" his cry rang out in the stillness. She heard him sink to a chair, pushing it back as he did so with a grating noise on the tiled floor. Presently he rose and came to her side, she remained motionless; he drew her resisting hands down from her face.

"Ragna, is this true?"

She nodded, not daring to look at him. He knelt beside her.

"Ragna, will you be my wife? Have I proved that I love you, now?"

She gazed at him in amazement.

"What! you still--?"

"Yes, dearest, I still love you. I told you that I was not like other men, I love you for yourself. Whatever your past may have been, if you have been unfortunate, all the more reason that I should protect your future, that I should give you the shield of my name."

"But there is not only myself, there is the child," she said weakly.

He frowned but recovered himself instantly.

"The child? I shall love it as I would my own,--is it not yours? I shall recognise it--it will be mine."

"You are generous," she said, "but I cannot accept, it would be taking an unfair advantage--I should be doing you a wrong."

"That is as I choose to look at it, and I don't consider it is."

"But I don't love you."

"Do you love anyone else?" He asked with swift scrutiny.

"No."

"Then you will love me in time--as long as there is no one else I am sure of that. All I ask is that you should marry me, that you should accept the protection I offer. For the child's sake you must accept--you can't refuse your child an honourable name. You will come to love me dear, I know it, and until that time I will be a brother to you, a friend, nothing more. All I ask is the privilege of helping you!"

He was carried away by the n.o.bility of the pose, it was a fine att.i.tude _un beau giste_; it fired his histrionic imagination and gave a ring of sincerity to his voice. For a moment he believed in himself as the chivalrous rescuer of distressed damsels.

"You do not know all, let me tell you all," she demurred.

"Yes, you must give me your entire confidence--you owe me that."

So she told him the whole story, and he pressed her hand the while to show his sympathy. At the end she paused, waiting--

"I can only repeat what I said before, dear: will you consent to marry me? If you like, don't think of yourself at all, think of me--I am a lonely man, an unhappy man, I have had a hard, disappointing life. You have become the lodestar of my life, you, Ragna! With you beside me I can do great things: I need you dear, without you life would be a desert. Last year I was very ill with typhoid fever, I nearly died; I was alone, no one loved me, no one cared whether I lived or died. If I were to be ill again who would care for me, who would nurse me? Whom have I to welcome me when I come home at night tired and discouraged?

Oh, Ragna, say 'yes,' do! and I will love you always for that word!"