He blushed like a girl. It was long since he had kissed that beautiful mouth, and yet that he had ever done so now seemed to him an offence against that other, whose purity made her the first and only true embodiment of his ideal woman. Involuntarily he withdrew his glance from the eyes that gazed at him with laughter in their depths.
Ah, she had done well to remind him of those happy first days,—the game was her own. "Did you really come to me, Leo, only to find fault and quarrel with me?" she asked, approaching him again and hastily laying her hand on his arm.
"You forget that you sent for me, Flora," he replied, gravely. "I should not have come of my own accord. I have two patients above-stairs; Henriette’s condition became critical towards morning. If you had not expressly desired my presence I should not have left her, nor should I, at this miserable and unhappy time, have brought affairs to the crisis you have just provoked."
"Crisis? Because in a fit of childish vexation I told you to go! How can you take girlish pique in such bitter earnest?" What words from one who usually repudiated all maidenly emotion as unworthy her masculine intellect! This slippery eel-like nature was hard to grapple with.
The doctor looked dismayed. Her capricious words had caused him merely to describe a circle; he was no farther with her than he had been at the beginning of the interview. "There I do not blame you," he answered, with a passionate impatience that would not be suppressed. "I allowed myself to confess to you——"
"Ah, yes, you told me of your masculine will, which must rise superior to all vagaries of feeling. Has it played you false at last?"
"No, not played me false, but submitted to better and purer convictions. Flora, I told you awhile ago that my refusal to dissolve the engagement between us was the result of a false principle. I had long known that in your heart there was not a trace of true self-sacrificing love for me; and I too had entirely outlived my feeling for you, which had never been a warm genuine emotion of the heart, but merely enthusiastic admiration. We had both been mistaken. True, I suffered severely in the thought of the loveless future that awaited me,—me to whom nature had given a heart craving affection; but I resigned myself to it, and you had less difficulty in reconciling yourself to your pretended rival, my profession, because our estrangement required of you no real sacrifice."