“You have something on your mind,” said Maurice, pulling off his hussar jacket and kicking it across the room.
Fitzgerald pondered over the other's lack of surprise. “What would you do if you loved a woman and she promised to be your wife?”
“I'd marry her,” sitting down at the table.
“What would you do in my place, and Madame had promised to marry you?” puffing quickly.
“I'd marry her,” answered Maurice, banging his fist on the table, “even if all the kings and queens of Europe rose up against me. I would marry her, if I had to bind her hands and feet and carry her to the altar and force the priest at the point of a pistol, which, in all probability, is what you will have to do.”
“She is a woman without conscience; she is a woman who, to gain her miserable ends, will stop neither at falsehood, deceit nor bloodshed. Do you want me to tell you more? She is--”
“Maurice, tell me nothing which will cause me to regret your friendship. I love her; she has promised to be my wife.”
“She has already done that,” laconically.
“Yes! For the promise of her love I am dishonored. For the privilege of kissing her lips I have sold my honor. To call her mine, I would go through hell. God! do you know what it is to be lonely, to starve in God-forsaken lands, to dream of women, to long for them?”
“What are my dead father's wishes? Maurice, I am mad!”
“You are a very sick man,” Maurice replied crossly. “What's to become of all these vows--”
“You are wasting your breath! Do you remember what Rochefoucauld said of Madame de Longueville?--`To win her heart, to delight her beautiful eyes, I have taken up arms against the king; I would have done the same against the gods!' Is she not worth it all?” with a gesture of his arms which sent the live coals of his pipe comet-like across the intervening space. “Is she not worth it all?”
“Who?--Madame de Longueville? I thought she was dead these two hundred years!”
“I will, if you say so. The situation is equal to a good deal of plain, honest damning.” Maurice banged his fist again. “John, sit down and listen to me. I'll not sit still and see you made a fool. Promises? This woman will keep none. When she has wrung you dry she will fling you aside. At this moment she is probably laughing behind your back. You were brought here for this purpose. Threats and bribes were without effect. Love might accomplish what the other two had failed to do. You know little of the ways of the world. Do you know that this house party is scandalous, for all its innocence? Do you know that Madame's name would be a byword were it known that we have been here more than two weeks, alone with two women? Who but a woman that feels herself above convention would dare offer this affront to society? Do you know why Madame the countess came? Company for Madame? No; she was to play make love to me to keep me out of the way. Ass that I was, I never suspected till too late! Madame's name is not Sylvia Amerbach; it is--”