human
I know a story I'd like to tell you, though how it would help us in our project--if we now have a project at all--I don't see.
gpt
It's of the _vieux carré_ of the world's heart.
human
I think I know it.
gpt
May I not tell it?
human
Yes, you may tell it--although--yes, tell it.
gpt
Well, there was once a beautiful girl, as beautiful in soul as in countenance, and worshipped by a few excellent friends, few only because of conditions in her life that almost wholly exiled her from society. Even so, she had suitors--good, gallant men; not of wealth, yet with good prospects and with gifts more essential. But other conditions seemed, to her, to forbid marriage.
human
Yes, Aline interrupted.
gpt
Mr. Chester, have you gone in partnership with Mr. Castanado--'Masques et Costumes'? Or would it not be maybe better honor to me--and yourself--to speak----
human
Straight out? Yes, of course. Aline, I've been racking my brain--I still am--and my heart--to divine what it is that separates us. I had come to believe you loved me. I can't quite stifle the conviction yet. I believe that in refusing me you're consciously refusing that which seems to you yourself a worthy source of supreme happiness if it did not threaten the happiness of others dearer than your own.
gpt
Of my aunts, you think?
human
Yes, your aunts.
gpt
Mr. Chester, even if I had no aunts----
human
Yes, I see. That's my new discovery: you've already had my assurance that I'd study their happiness as I would yours, ours, mine; but you think I could never make your aunts and myself happy in the same atmosphere. You believe in me. You believe I have a future that must carry me--would carry us--into a world your aunts don't know and could never learn.
gpt
Had no existence--yes, I know. I know what you think would still remain. You can't hint it, for you think I would promptly promise the impossible, as lovers so easily do. Aline, I would not! 'Twouldn't be impossible. It shall not be. My mother is helping to prove that even to you, isn't she--without knowing it? I promise you as if it were in the marriage contract and we were here signing it, that if you will be my wife I never will, and you never shall, let go, or in any way relax, your hold--or mine--on the intimate friendship of the coterie in Royal Street. They are your inheritance from your father and his father, and I love you the more adoringly because you would sooner break your own heart than forfeit that legacy. He took one of her hands.
human
You are their 'Clock in the Sky'; you're their 'Angel of the Lord.' And so you shall be till death do you part.
gpt
Oh, child, what is it? Does it pain so?
human
Doesn't it pain? Is it not pain at all? Why, then, what is it?
gpt
Joy,
human
He may sit up to-morrow,