“No.”
“Then we must fight it; we will fight him together, you and I.”
“You and I? Then we should lose, and your child would be taken from you without fail.”
“Well then; as you close every way of escape, open another; it is the least you can do.”
“To-morrow!” said Leon sadly and looking at the floor: “I will open the only way there is.”
“To-morrow!” cried Pepa with a gesture of indignant impatience, and then relapsing into dejection as a glowing cinder suddenly becomes mere ashes. “Your to-morrows kill me!”
“Then you insist on the idea of flying?”
“I insist, because every minute you stay here, that I and my child stay here, but increases the peril for all of us. This night, which to you is one of mourning, is the turning point of my fate. He is capable—how can I tell! I fear the worst and tremble at every sound. I am so miserably afraid.—I know that if he heard of your being here, he would come and insult you,—fancy your fighting with him!—I am afraid of his insulting her, of his coming before me face to face. He always hated you.... I am afraid even that he might assassinate you.—I feel as though every conceivable horror were closing round me—I seem to see blood.—And it would be so easy now to step out of this circle of terrors. Oh! take me away and give me shelter in your house.”
“Everything in good time.”
“Will you wait for me there?”