"Good! I like you, Denzil; you are a charming boy! Hot-tempered and a trifle melodramatic in your loves and hatreds,--yes!--for that you might have been a Provencal instead of a Scot. Before I knew you I had a vague idea that all Scotchmen were, or needs must be, ridiculous,--I don't know why. I associated them with bagpipes, short petticoats and whisky. I had no idea of the type you so well represent,--the dark, fine eyes, the strong physique, and the impetuous disposition which suggests the South rather than the North; and to-night you look so unlike the accepted cafe chantant picture of the ever-dancing Highlander that you might in very truth be a Florentine in more points than the dress which so well becomes you. Yes,--I like you--and more than you, I like your sister. That is why I don't want to quarrel with you; I wouldn't grieve Mademoiselle Helen for the world."
Murray gave him a quick, half-angry side-glance.
"You are a strange fellow, Gervase. Two summers ago you were almost in love with Helen."
Gervase sighed.
"True. Almost. That's just it. 'Almost' is a very uncomfortable word. I have been almost in love so many times. I have never been drawn by a woman's eyes and dragged down, down,--in a mad whirlpool of sweetness and poison intermixed. I have never had my soul strangled by the coils of a woman's hair--black hair, black as night,--in the perfumed meshes of which a jewelled serpent gleams ... I have never felt the insidious horror of a love like strong drink mounting through the blood to the brain, and there making inextricable confusion of time, space, eternity, everything, except the passion itself; never, never have I felt all this, Denzil, till to-night! To-night! Bah! It is a wild night of dancing and folly, and the Princess Ziska is to blame for it all! Don't look so tragic, my good Denzil,--what ails you now?"
"What ails me? Good Heavens! Can you ask it!" and Murray gave a gesture of mingled despair and impatience. "If you love her in this wild, uncontrolled way ..."
"It is the only way I know of," said Gervase. "Love must be wild and uncontrolled to save it from banalite. It must be a summer thunderstorm; the heavy brooding of the clouds of thought, the lightning of desire, then the crash, the downpour,--and the end, in which the bland sun smiles upon a bland world of dull but wholesome routine and tame conventionality, making believe that there never was such a thing known as the past storm! Be consoled, Denzil, and trust me,--you shall have time to make your honorable proposal, and Madame had better accept you,--for your love would last,--mine could not!"