"It is true," he answered, "true as that I stand here. One day--it is
not one day. I knew you years ago. The seed was sown then, the flower
springs up to-day, that is all. You think I can't know that it is love I
feel for you? It is admiration; it is faith; it is desire too; but it is
love. When you see a flower in a garden, do you not know at once if you
like it or no? Don't you know the moment you look on a landscape, on a
splendid building, whether it is beautiful to you? If, then, with these
things one knows--these that haven't any speech, no life like yours or
mine--how much more when it is a girl with a face like yours, when it is
a mind noble like yours, when it is a touch that thrills, and a voice
that drowns the heart in music! Guida, believe that I speak the truth.
I know, I swear, that you are the one passion, the one love of my life.
All others would be as nothing, so long as you live, and I live to look
upon you, to be beside you."

"Beside me!" she broke in, with an incredulous irony fain to be
contradicted, "a girl in a village, poor, knowing nothing, seeing no
farther"--she looked out towards Jersey--"seeing no farther than the
little cottage in the little country where I was born."

"But you shall see more," he said, "you shall see all, feel all, if you
will but listen to me. Don't deny me what is life and breathing and hope
to me. I'll show you the world; I'll take you where you may see and
know. We will learn it all together. I shall succeed in life. I shall
go far. I've needed one thing to make me do my best for some one's sake
beside my own; you will make me do it for your sake. Your ancestors were
great people in France; and you know that mine, centuries ago, were great
also--that the d'Avranches were a noble family in France. You and I will
win our place as high as the best of them. In this war that's coming
between England and France is my chance. Nelson said to me the other