“Why have you never been near me?” retorted Camille. “I could forgive your weakness, but not your heartlessness.”
“It is my duty. I have no right to seek your society. If you really want mine, you have only to get well, and so join us down-stairs a week or two before you leave us.”
“How am I to get well? My heart is broken.”
“Camille, be a man. Do not fling away a soldier’s life because a fickle, worthless woman could not wait for you. Forgive me like a man, or else revenge yourself like a man. If you cannot forgive me, kill me. See, I kneel at your feet. I will not resist you. Kill me.”
“I wish I could. Oh! if I could kill you with a look and myself with a wish! No man should ever take you from me, then. We would be together in the grave at this hour. Do not tempt me, I say;” and he cast a terrible look of love, and hatred, and despair upon her. Her purple eye never winced; it poured back tenderness and affection in return. He saw and turned away with a groan, and held out his hand to her. She seized it and kissed it. “You are great, you are generous; you will not strike me as a woman strikes; you will not die to drive me to despair.”
“I see,” said he, more gently, “love is gone, but pity remains. I thought that was gone, too.”
“Yes, Camille,” said Josephine, in a whisper, “pity remains, and remorse and terror at what I have done to a man of whom I was never worthy.”
“Well, madame, as you have come at last to me, and even do me the honor to ask me a favor—I shall try—if only out of courtesy—to—ah, Josephine! Josephine! when did I ever refuse you anything?”
At this Josephine sank into a chair, and burst out crying. Camille, at this, began to cry too; and the two poor things sat a long way from one another, and sobbed bitterly.
The man, weakened as he was, recovered his quiet despair first.