"Countess, you are a great woman: yours is a nature born to rule. Come with me, you have the courage for it. There is a throne to be established in the New World; and upon this throne will I set you as queen. Come!"
There was a tone of authority, of command, in Sonnenkamp's voice, as he grasped her by the hand. She rose; her lips trembled, her eyes sparkled.
"I thank you," she said. "You are great, and you fancy greatness in me. That is it. I thank you. O my friend, we are weak, pitiful creatures. Too late, too late! Why does such a call come too late? Ten years ago, I should have had the strength for it; then it would have tempted me; I would have risked every thing then, and taken the chance of shame and death; any thing had been better than this maimed, idle, good-for-nothing, musty, relic-hunting, sickly, sanctimonious—no, I did not mean to say that—and yet—I thank you. You pay me a higher honor than was ever paid me before: you recognize what I might have been; but I cannot be it now. Too late!"
"Too late!" cried Sonnenkamp, seizing both her hands. "Bella, you say, that, if I had come in your youth, you would have gone with me into the wide world. Bella, Countess, we are young so long as we will to be. You are young, and I will be young. When you came to me that time in the spring, I gave you a rose, a centifolium, and said to you, you are not like this flower. And you are not like it; for your bloom is ever fresh; your will, your strength, blossoms. Be courageous; be yourself; be your own. What are seventy maimed, idle years? One year full of life is more than they all."
Bella sank back in her chair, and covered her face with her handkerchief.
"Why did you appeal to the Court," she said at length, "if you meant to leave before sentence was pronounced?"
"Why? I thank you for the question. I am free: henceforth I can speak the honest truth, and to you above all others. For a while, I really believed that this would offer me a way of escape. But I soon abandoned that idea, and now"—
He paused.
"And now?" repeated Bella.
"I wanted to show these puppets, these children who are always giving themselves up to leading-strings which they call religion or morality or politics,—I wanted to show them what a free human being was, an undisguised egoist. That tempted me. When the time came for putting my plan into execution, it was only for your sake that I carried out what I had proposed; for you only I laid bare my whole life. I was resolved you should know who I am. I hardly spoke to the men who were before me; I spoke to you; behind myself, above myself, I spoke to you, Bella."