Will you be my wife, Vjera, and come with me out of this wretched existence to share my happy life and to make it happier?
Will you ?" His tone was so sincere and loving that it produced a little storm of evanescent happiness in the girl's heart, and the tears started to her eyes and stained her sallow, waxen cheeks.
"Ah, if it could only be true!" she exclaimed in a voice more than half full of hope, as she quickly brushed away the drops.
"But it is true, indeed it is," answered the Count.

"Oh, Vjera, do you think I would deceive you?
Do you think I could tell you a story in which there is no truth whatever?
Do not think that of me, Vjera." The tears broke out afresh, but from a different source.

For some seconds she could not speak.
"Why do you cry so bitterly ?" he asked, not understanding at all what was passing.

"I swear to you it is all true--" "It is not that--it is not that," cried Vjera.

"I know--I know that you believe it--and I love you so very much--" "But then, I do not understand," said the Count in a low voice that expressed his pitiful perplexity.