“Sir Charleroy saw me slay the Turk. Had I failed, thou falling, this blade would have found my own heart. Push me onward by thy imperiousness and I will slay the babe and then myself! Methinks, it would be an atonement for which my parent would forgive my breaking of his heart. Ah, then sweet rest; life’s tumults over! God would pity the tempest-tossed soul that, through such bitterness, flung itself on Him.”
“Dost mean all this, Rizpah?”
“Can I trifle? Ask thyself. Have I ever? My desperate sincerity made me thy wife, but now it impels me to defy all thy attempts to make me thy minion, unthinking echo or slave; or worse, the ruiner of that girl.”
“Well, then, woman, since thou or I must yield and I can not, thou wilt not, I execute my before announced purpose to have my lawful authority acknowledged with thee or——”
“Say the rest, find peace away from me——”
“Which?” sternly demanded the knight.
“As thou dost wish, only I’ll not give up my child to Christian sacrifice.”
“Then we can not live in peace together.”
“To which I reply, that God never ordained marriage to bind people to the home when they can only for each other in that home make a very Tartarus!”