XXV.
He watched her in silence—he on the threshold, and she half turning toward him proudly in her surprise.
André was the first to break the silence.
"Paganina," said he, "I come from the home that you have left. I found the house deserted, and I went to seek you at the tomb of your father."
"Yes," she replied with bitterness, "and you find me here in the garb of a comedian. What do you wish with me?"
"I wish to snatch you from this cursed place; to fly with you so far that you may forget this fatal evening, and again become obedient to the voice of your father. Come, I will be your protector, your guardian, your slave—until the day," he added in a lower voice, "when I dare breathe to you my secret, and tell you that I love you."
"André, listen to me. I will speak to you sincerely. I wish to love you. I swear to you I wish it. To quit this country, fly with you, go into Germany and inhabit the house of my father, and there raise a family, would be my happiness; but it can never be."
"The love I bear you, Paganina, has taken deep root. Near you alone am I happy; but if it must be so, speak! If you have given your heart to a man worthy of you, tell me, and destroy in me all hope for ever. For you I can bear any thing. But if it is not so, do not answer me yet. Wait; my humility may disarm you, and some day my patience may end in moving your heart."
"No! my heart is but ashes; no affection blooms nor will bloom within it. It is too late."
"Do not speak so, I beg of you. You do not know what the future has in store for you, nor see the Providence that watches over you. It has sent me to you, and with me the remembrance of happy years and the presence of your father."
"The angel itself is not yet arrested in its fall. Go! let me hang suspended between the heaven that is shut against me, and the abyss whose depths I seek."
She burst into tears. André, after a silence, approached her.
"Paganina," said he, "do not weep. Come; see! the dawn already whitens the fields. Let the God of the morning comfort you. The wind rises forerunner of a new day. Bathe your forehead in its breath, and respire with its penetrating odors the forgetfulness of your sufferings. To-day, perhaps, will bring us back peace and happiness."
"No, to-day will be fatal. The beauty of the morning moves me no longer; for me the evening fires, the flames of the foot-lights, the éclat of triumph. I will go from fête to fête, from ovation to ovation. I want the whirlpool of the world to seize and carry me until I lose my health—and forget every thing. Immediately I set out for the Château Sarrasin."
"Ah! this, then," cried André with a sudden explosion of passion, "this, then, is the secret of your resistance and the avowal of your shame. The public cry that brought me here had already warned me. I refused to listen to it. Well, go; but fear every thing. You have roused in me a monster that I knew not of."
And raising his hands to heaven, the unhappy one fled.