Ragna had dropped her face in her hands and was weeping as though her heart were broken, but the tears were of rage rather than of grief.
"Listen, Mademoiselle, listen! Ragna, don't cry like that! Listen to what I have to say to you! That was my official message, but this is what I really come to say." His face was pale and his eyes blazed. "Ragna I have loved you ever since we first met,--I love you still--"
She interrupted him with an hysterical laugh.
"Don't talk to me about love, I have learned what that means!" She now sat stiffly, her head held upright.
"Poor child," he said gravely, "my love is not of that kind, I want to marry you, Ragna."
"But you don't understand," she cried, "surely you can't know, or you would not say that!"
"I do know," he said, still very gravely, "I know all, and because I realize that you are a victim, because I love you really and want to have the power to protect you, I ask you plainly: will you be my wife?"
She smiled cynically. It was too much. In the light of her terrible disillusionment she could not understand the sincerity of the man. Her whole world had fallen in ruins about her and the dust of her broken idol obscured her vision. Angelescu had made the fatal mistake of delivering Mirko's message, and Ragna having found one man so utterly vile, could not, for the moment, believe generosity or magnanimity possible in any other. "He thinks it would be convenient to have me married to his aide," she thought. "Find the girl a husband, and all is comfortably arranged!" She despised Angelescu for lending himself to such a scheme.
"I think not, thank you," she said in a hard voice.
"Then think well if you are doing right," he said earnestly, "in refusing a man who not only loves you but respects you, who is, above all things, anxious for your welfare."
"I see, you mean that beggars should not be choosers!"
He considered her compassionately, and it was in a very gentle voice that he said:
"I know that I have not chosen a good time for this--but I had no choice. To-morrow I must accompany the Prince," his mouth twisted as he said it, "back to Montegria, but before going I had to see you, I had to tell you that I love you, that I shall stand by you, that I am at your disposal, to take, or to leave."