“There was no way but bloodshed,” Leon said hastily.
Pepa made no answer.
“I am the victim,” she exclaimed after a painful silence. “And I cannot bear to die—it is grief and punishment. I hate to be sacrificed; it is misery, utter misery, even if it is right and just—even if I deserve it. Here, before me, I see two respectable men—my father and a judge. Well, before them, and before you.—The man I claim....” And she fixed her eyes on Leon’s with an indescribable expression of love and reproach; she gasped for air and hardly seemed to have breath enough to speak: “You are mine—and before you all three I declare that this desertion...” she burst into tears and added feebly: “is cowardly.”
Don Justo lifted up his calm persuasive voice.
“Try,” he said, “to see the immediate details in their true proportions, and fix your thoughts on broad and eternal facts. The soul may grow to the dignity of its sorrows and borrow from them a sort of majesty to rule the spirit.”
“True,” said Leon sadly. “Our very wounds reveal a secret and ineffable fount of compensation. Pepa—my darling, my heart’s wife—wife, I say, by an unwritten law on which we may not act, which can never be of any avail; but which lurks in my soul like the germ of truth, a holy seed buried in the depths of being.—Look into your soul and you will see yourself nobler and more worthy in your sorrow than in the satisfaction of your passion. Though we are conquered and humiliated by the crushing necessity that parts us—a mysterious mixture of something dignified and venerable with iniquity and injustice, a horrible and unnatural coalition, we may enjoy the noblest form of triumph. You are religious; and I believe in the immortality of the soul, in eternal justice, in final perfection: a brief creed but a grand and firm one. We are conquered; we are victims and martyrs. But Hope has no limits. It is a grace which links us to the unknown and calls to us from afar, beautifying life and giving us strength to stand firm and walk onward. We will not be so criminal as to cut the thread which guides us forward to a goal which, though remote, is not invisible to eyes that are not bound by an evil conscience. Conquer despair, rise superior to it; resign yourself, and hope.”
“Hope? Have I not said that I should die hoping?” said Pepa bitterly, recurring to an old idea. “It is my punishment; my heart told me long since that its name was Hope. And if I die?”
“It matters not.”
“It matters not?” she said, for Leon’s fervent spirituality did not meet her mood. He would have said more, but he was at an end of his arguments, and the suggestions of consolation and hope with which he tried to do battle were, he saw, of no more avail than weapons which break in the hand in the heat of a fray. He knew not what to say. Feeling, which can sometimes be quelled by reason, and which he had studiously endeavoured to subdue and control, rose in revolt, snatched up its despotic sceptre and asserted its dominion. He rose.
“Now—so soon?” said Pepa rushing into his arms with a sudden overflow of passion.