‘Well, have you made your choice?’ cried she at length, as with a slight smile she stood in front of him.
‘It would be a treachery to my own heart, and to you, too, were I to say that all this magnificence I see here suggested no thought of evil. We were poor even to misery once, Marietta—I am still so; and well I know that in such wretchedness as ours temptation is triply dangerous. To tell me that you have yielded is, then, no more than to confess you were like others.’
‘Of what, then, do you accuse me? Is it that I am Mirabeau’s mistress? Would that I were!’ cried she passionately; ‘would that by my devotion I could share his love and give him all my own! You would cry shame upon me for this avowal. You think more highly of your own petty contrivances, your miserable attempts to sustain a mock morality—your boasted tie of marriage—than of the emotions that are born with you, that move your infancy, sway your manhood, and temper your old age. You hold that by such small cheats you supply the insatiable longings of the human heart. But the age of priestcraft is over; throne, altar, purple, sceptre, incense and all, have fled; and in the stead of man’s mummeries we have installed Man himself, in the might of his intellect, the glorious grandeur of his great conceptions, and the noble breadth of his philanthropy; and who is the type of these, if not Gabriel Riquetti? His mistress! what have I not done to win the proud name? Have I not striven hard for it? These triumphs, as they call them, my great successes, had no other promptings. If my fame as an actress stands highest in Europe, it was gained but in his cause. Your great Alfieri himself has taught me no emotions I have not learned in my own deep love; and how shadowy and weak the poet’s words beside the throbbing ecstasies of one true heart! You ask for a confession: you shall have one. But why do you go? Would you leave me?’
‘Would that we had never met again!’ said Gerald sadly. ‘Through many a dark and sad hour have I looked back upon our life, when, as little more than children, we journeyed days long together. I pictured to myself how the same teachings that nerved my own heart in trouble must have supported and sustained yours. If you knew how I used to dwell upon the memory of that time; its very privations were hallowed in my memory, telling how through all our little cares and sorrows our love sufficed us!’
‘Our love,’ broke she in scoffingly. ‘What a mockery! The poor offspring of some weak sentimentality, the sickly cant of some dreamy sonneteer. These men never knew what love was, or they had not dared to profane it by their tawdry sentiments. Is it in nature,’ cried she wildly, ‘to declare trumpet-tongued to the world the secrets on which the heart feeds to live, the precious thoughts that to the dearest could not be revealed? These are your poets! Over and over have I wished for you to tell you this—to tear out of your memory that wretched heresy we then believed a faith.’
‘You have done your work well,’ said he sorrowfully. ‘Good-bye for ever!’
‘I wish you would not go, Gherardi,’ said she, laying her hand on his arm, and gazing at him with a look of the deepest meaning. ‘To me, alone and orphaned, you represent a family and kindred. The old ties are tender ones.’
‘Why will you thus trifle with me?’ said he, half angrily.
‘Is it to rekindle the flame you would extinguish afterward?’
‘And why not return to that ancient faith? You were happier when you loved me—when I learned my verses by your side, and sang the wild songs of my own wild land. Do you remember this one; it was a favourite once with you?’ And, turning to the piano, she struck a few chords, and in a voice of liquid melody sang a little Calabrese peasant song, whose refrain ended with the words—