"An insult? Then, even now I have not made you understand."
"I think that I understand very well—far too well," said Sylvia brokenly. The beautiful fairy structure of happiness that she had reared lay shattered—destroyed in the moment which should have seen its completion.
"I tell you that you do not understand, or you would not say—you would not dare to say, my love—that I had insulted you. You would 174 be honourably my wife in the sight of God and man."
"Your wife!" and Sylvia gave a hard little laugh which hurt more cruelly than tears. "You have a strange idea of that word, which has always been sacred to me. I would be your wife, you say; I would give you all my love, all myself; you—would give me your left hand. And you know well that, at any moment, you would be free to marry another woman—(a woman you could make an Empress!)—as free as if I had no existence."
"Legally I might be free," he answered, "but I swear to you that I would never take advantage of such liberty."
"To know you possessed it would be death to me. Oh, I tell you again, it was an insult to suggest a fate so miserable, so contemptible, for a woman you profess to love. How could you bear to break it to me? If only you had never spoken the hateful words; if you had left me the ideal I had formed of you—noble, glorious! But you are selfish, cruel—after all. If you had only said, 'I love you, yet we must part, 175 for Fate stands between', then I could—I could: but no, I can never tell you now what I might have answered if you had said that instead."
Under the sharp fire of her reproaches he stood still, his lips tightly closed, his shoulders squared, as if he had bared his breast for the blow of a knife.
"By heaven, it is you who are cruel!" he said at last. "How can I show you your injustice?"
"In no way. There is nothing more to say between us two, except—farewell."
"It shall not be farewell!"