She protested sadly:
“It is to you I have come, Lafcadio—to no one else. To you—a criminal. Lafcadio! How many times have I sighed your name since the first day when you appeared to me like a hero—indeed, you seemed a little over-daring ... I must tell you now—I made a secret vow to myself that I would be yours, from that very moment when I saw you risk your life so nobly. What has happened since then? Can you really have killed someone? What have you let yourself become?”
And as Lafcadio shook his head without answering: “Did I not hear my father say that someone else had been arrested—a ruffian, who had just committed a murder?... Lafcadio! while there is still time, save yourself! This very night! Go! Go!”
Then Lafcadio:
“Too late!” he murmured. And as he felt Genevieve’s loosened hair on his hands, he caught it, pressed it passionately to his eyes, his lips. “Flight! Is that really what you counsel me? But where can I possibly fly? Even if I escaped from the police, I could not escape from myself.... And, besides, you would despise me for escaping.”
“I! Despise you!”
“I lived unconscious; I killed in a dream—a nightmare, in which I have been struggling ever since.”
“I will save you from it,” she cried.
“What is the use of waking me, if I am to wake a criminal?” He seized her by the arm: “Can’t you understand that the idea of impunity is odious to me? What is there left for me to do—if not to give myself up as soon as it is daybreak?”
“You must give yourself up to God, not to man. Even if my father had not said it already, I should say so myself now: Lafcadio, the Church is there to prescribe your penance and to help you back to peace through repentance.”