The maiden shuddered, and again passionately clung to her lover. He interpreted her action, and again comfortingly spoke:
“Fear not; earth has somewhere a refuge for us until death call us!”
“Somewhere? What, go away?”
“Yes. It is that or separation.”
She knew that full well. But to flee from home with the knight, the alternative presented to her mind, startled her. At first thought it seemed a reckless, perilous, unfilial, God-defying act; then it seemed attractive because so daring. A tumult of arguments questionings, fears and yearnings mingled in her mind. She had never learned to arrange arguments, pro and con, judicially. What woman whose feelings were aroused ever did that?
He pressed on her flight, enforcing each reason presented with an affectionate embrace; her tongue spoke not, but her embraces replied to each of his. She had a conscience, and it asserted itself until she placated it by a half formed resolution to be very prudent and do nothing rashly. The resolution comforted her at first; then she began to follow it, mentally, to its sequence. She thought of her father praising her piety as her purpose was disclosed. Something within, coming like a voice from her heart, mockingly whispered “Go on.” She pursued the meditations, and heard, in imagination, her neighbors praising her as a martyr of love for faith’s sake. Again the mocking inner voice said, “Go on.” Again her thoughts moved forward until she saw that conscience was driving her to separation from Sir Charleroy; in a word, making her walk in a funeral procession, her own dead heart on the bier. The thought made her shudder and recoil; then the knight’s arms encircled her more closely than before. Again and again she took the foregoing mental journey, again and again recoiled, shuddering from the alternative of separation from her lover, and at each recoil felt his grateful embrace. Each time she traversed the mental course the journey toward duty by the privation of love seemed more onerous. Distaste was followed by repugnance; then utter weariness. At last, utterly wretched, her purposes and perceptions fell into hopeless confusion, and she exclaimed “Charleroy, Charleroy, save me!”
The knight was at a loss to divine fully her meaning, yet tenderly he answered:
“Save Rizpah? She knows I’d do that in death’s teeth!”
“Oh, Charleroy, ’tis not death, but life, that I fear. How shall I live?”