“It is over,” I murmured incoherently, “leave me. I do not wish to speak to you any more. I do not wish to marry you. I want to go away and never see you again.”
“Mura! you are dreaming, you are out of your mind! What have I done that you should speak to me like this?”
His bewilderment and despair only irritated me the more. “You will drag me to ruin and misfortune. I was told so; and I know, I feel that it is true.”
“You were told so?” gasped Paul. “What are you saying? Mura, come to your senses. Who has put such preposterous notions into your head?”
Notwithstanding my dazed and drugged state of mind, I felt that to tell him about the fortune-teller would neither convince nor impress him; he would probably laugh, and try to coax or scold me back to my senses. So I wrapped myself in an obstinate and mysterious silence.
The unhappy man was perplexed and distressed.
“Who has poisoned your mind against me, Mura? Think, think a moment; who in all the world could love you more than I do? Who could protect you and care for you better than I can, poor helpless creature that you are?”
But I was possessed by the blind obstinacy of madness. Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat. My destiny was coming upon me at the very time I thought to evade it.
“Let me be!” My hands twisted themselves from his grasp. “I will not see you again! I will not!”
“But I will,” cried Kamarowsky, clasping my wrist in an iron grip, and his long, languorous eyes opened wide and flamed into mine. “Do you think that because I am kind and patient you can play fast and loose with me? No indeed, no indeed; you have promised to be mine, and I shall make you keep your word.”