“As I say, I know nothing about her, except that she’d be an honest girl if you’d let her alone.”
He was still holding my arm, and I let him hold it: the man was hardly himself under the slavery of his passion. But again, at my words, the wonder which I had seen before stole into his eyes.
“You must know where she is,” he said, with a straining look at my face, “but—but—”
He broke off, leaving his sentence unfinished. Then he broke out again:
“Safe from me? I would make life a heaven for her!”
“That’s the old plea,” said I.
“Is a thing a lie because it’s old? There’s nothing in the world I would not give her—nothing I have not offered her.” Then he looked at me, repeating again: “You must know where she is.” And then he whispered: “Why aren’t you with her?”
“I have no wish to be with her,” said I. Any other reason would not have appealed to him.
He sank down on the stool again and sat in a heap, breathing heavily and quickly. He was wonderfully transfigured, and I hardly knew in him the cold harsh man who had been my temporary master and was the mocking husband of the duchess. Say all that may be said about his passion, I could not doubt that it was life and death to him. Justification he had none; excuse I found in my heart for him, for it struck me—coming over me in a strange sudden revelation as I sat and looked at him—that he had given such love to the duchess, the gay little lady would have been marvelously embarrassed. It was hers to dwell in a radiant mid-ether, neither to mount to heaver nor descend to hell. And in one of theses two must dwell such feelings as the dukes’s.
He roused himself, and leaning forward spoke to me again: