“Thine still, dear love; and, for all her shame—inviolate.”
She hid her face to speak it. This was no swooning vision, but reality. No matter whence she had come, or at what instigation—the death-warrant was cancelled. Life at her words flowed back to him, lapped in a sensuous dream. Doubts, fears, proscriptions were all forgotten. His pulses beat to madness: a delirious hunger of her swelled his veins. This sweet fruit of his desire! It were as if the heavy-bosomed grapes, made animate by Love, had drooped of their own pity to the lips of Tantalus. Should he not crush them in his mouth? unquestioning, praising the heavenly mercy, not abusing it with one self-scruple as to his deserts? It was characteristic of him, at least, so to surrender his will to circumstance. He flushed as if intoxicated. He leaned impassioned towards her: “My wife!” he whispered, and drew her to his heart.
She raised her streaming eyes,—
“What you have suffered for my sake—and not the least to find you here.”
“Here, Yolande? the best that could have happened to me.”
“O, my love! you must not say it. It is a wicked house.”
“Yolande!”
“O, God! my saint is innocent! Louis! this man, your friend, and the poor girl—!”
“What of them?”
“They live in sin together—O, my lamb among the wolves!”