“Never!” she exclaimed. “It’s an insult”
“I tell you that you cannot understand, or you wouldn’t say—you wouldn’t dare to say, my love—that I’d insulted you. Don’t you see, don’t you know, that you would be my wife in the sight of all men, as well as in the sight of God.”
“Your wife, you call it!” the Princess gave a harsh little laugh which hurt as tears could not hurt. “You seem to have strange ideas of that word, which has always been sacred to me. A morganatic marriage! That is a mere pretense, an hypocrisy. I would be ‘your wife,’ you say. I would give you all my love, all my life. You, in return, would give me—your left hand. And you know well that, in a country which tolerates such a one-sided travesty of marriage, the laws would hold you free to marry another woman—a Royal woman, whom you could make an Empress—as free as if I had no existence.”
“Great Heaven, that you should speak so!” he broke out. “What if the law did hold me free? Can you dream—do you put me so low as to dream that my heart would hold me free? My soul would be bound to you forever.”
“So you may believe, now. But the knowledge that you could change would be death to me—a death to die daily. Yes, I tell you again, it was an insult to offer a lot so miserable, so contemptible, to a woman you profess to love. How could you do it? If only you had never spoken the hateful words! If only you had left me the ideal I had of you—noble, glorious, above the whole world of men. But after all you are selfish,—cruel. If you had said ‘I love you, yet we must part, for Duty stands between us.’ I could—but no, I can never tell you now what I could have answered if you had said that, instead of breaking my heart.”
Under the fire of her reproach he stood still, his lips tight, his shoulders braced, as if he held his breast open for the knife.
“By Heaven, it is you who are cruel,” he said at last. “How can I make you see your injustice?”
“In no way. There’s nothing more to be said between us two after this, except—good-by.”
“It shall not be good-by.”
“It must. I wish it.”