Alpha Book

"You have always seemed mysterious to me," answered Orsino. "Perhaps
that is a great attraction. But instead of learning the truth about you,
I am finding out that there are more and more secrets in your life which
I must not know."
"Why should you know them?"
"Because--" Orsino checked himself, almost with a start.
He was annoyed at the words which had been so near his lips, for he had
been on the point of saying "because I love you"--and he was intimately
convinced that he did not love her. He could not in the least understand
why the phrase was so ready to be spoken. Could it be, he asked himself,
that Maria Consuelo was trying to make him say the words, and that her
will, with her question, acted directly on his mind? He scouted the
thought as soon as it presented itself, not only for its absurdity, but
because it shocked some inner sensibility.
"What were you going to say?" asked Madame d'Aranjuez almost carelessly.
"Something that is best not said," he answered.
"Then I am glad you did not say it.


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