“I can no longer hope for healing, then,” he murmured.
And raising his head again, he added—
“It is the love of a woman that has reduced me to this miserable state.”
Not till then did Euphrosine recognize Count Longinus. She feared that he likewise might recognize her. But she soon reassured herself, and was seized with pity to see him looking so cast down and discomfited.
After a long silence, Count Longinus exclaimed—
“I would fain become a monk to escape from my despair.”
Then he told the story of his love, and how his betrothed, Euphrosine, had suddenly disappeared; how for eight years he had sought her and failed to find her, and how he was consumed and wasted with love and grief.
She answered him with a gentleness that was heavenly.
“My lord, this Euphrosine, whose love you so bitterly deplore, was not worthy of so much love. Her beauty was not so precious, except in the ideal you yourself have formed of it; in truth, it is vile and contemptible. It was perishable, and what remains of it is not worth a regret. You believe yourself unable to live without Euphrosine, and yet, if you should happen to meet her, you might even fail to recognize her.”
Count Longinus answered not a word, but this speech, or possibly the voice in which it was pronounced, made a happy impression on his soul. He departed in a more tranquil mood, and promised to return.