As he gazed upon that familiar, distasteful name, he seemed to have known all along that this must come, this moment, this interview; that this was what had cast a shadow on their relations, and that this was the end.
“Once,” he said, half to himself, half to her—it seemed to him as if her mind ought to recognise his thoughts without the outward expression of words,—“once I robbed this man of someone he loved; and now he robs me of you!”
As he sighed out that last word he recollected. Perhaps at that moment Roderick Pym was dead, his revenge had cost him his life; for the count would be a dangerous antagonist, he was a skilled swordsman and a dead shot.
“How, when do they fight?” he asked breathlessly, with the instinct to stay that duel at any cost.
“Fight!” she spoke almost indignantly. “Do you think I would let the good count kill himself for me—even for you?” Tears stood in her eyes. “I knelt and prayed him,” she said. “I begged him, but he would not hear me. He said: ‘Would you have me be a coward?’ Then at last he said to me: ‘If you will promise me that to-morrow you will go home to Spain with the prince, and will never see or speak to him again, I too will go with you, and will sacrifice my honneur.’” She paused and hung her head. “So, as I have promised, I have come to say good-bye,” she faltered.
Yes; he had known this all along, he felt he had. This was the end—the end of a promised passionate joy—the end of delights of eye and ear—of heart, soul, mind, body—all!
“Yes,” he said, meekly bowing his head, “I understand. We part; it is all over for ever.”
“Oh no!” she cried, with sudden life, and her face was alight with love and hope, “only for here! You know—who should know better than you?—how short is this life, you who always see the dead and dying! Is it death, that which we call death?” she asked him, passionately. “Do you think it? Do you not rather think that this is dying, this living in a place where you must not love, where people hate and torture each other, and happiness cannot be, for no one will let another one be happy?”
He went to her and took her slender, cold hands in his—for the last time.
“It does not matter,” he said, bitterly, yet feeling, with a strange joy, that this sacrifice of love ennobled their love, raised it from a common thing to divinity. “No one can separate us after death, if God wills us to be soul to soul—one for ever.”