"Do not be afraid of it. It is only being alone with a man whom you have
bewitched. You would be mistress of the situation if you only knew how
to manage a lover. It is far easier than managing a horse, or skating,
or playing the piano, or half a dozen other feats of which you think
nothing."

Agatha colored and raised her head.

"Forgive me," he said, interrupting the action. "I am trying to offend
you in order to save myself from falling in love with you, and I have
not the heart to let myself succeed. On your life, do not listen to me
or believe me. I have no right to say these things to you. Some fiend
enters into me when I am at your side. You should wear a veil, Agatha."

She blushed, and stood burning and tingling, her presence of mind gone,
and her chief sensation one of relief to hear--for she did not dare
to see--that he was departing. Her consciousness was in a delicious
confusion, with the one definite thought in it that she had won her
lover at last. The tone of Trefusis's voice, rich with truth and
earnestness, his quick insight, and his passionate warning to her not to
heed him, convinced her that she had entered into a relation destined to
influence her whole life.

"And yet," she said remorsefully, "I cannot love him as he loves me.
I am selfish, cold, calculating, worldly, and have doubted until now
whether such a thing as love really existed. If I could only love him
recklessly and wholly, as he loves me!"

Smilash was also soliloquizing as he went on his way.