"Is, that you will never marry Roger without my consent."
The chance of regaining her liberty is so sweet to Dulce at this first moment that it chases from her all other considerations. Oh, to be free again! In vain she strives to hide her gladness. It will not be hidden. Her eyes gleam; her lips get back their color; there is such an abandonment of joy and exultation in her face that the man at her side—the man who is now resigning all that makes life sweet to him—feels his heart grow mad with bitter hatred of her, himself, and all the world as he watches her with miserable eyes. And he—poor fool!—had once hoped he might win the priceless treasure of this girl's love! No words could convey the contempt and scorn with which he regards himself.
"Do not try to restrain your relief," he says, in a hoarse, unnatural tone, seeing she has turned her head a little aside, as though to avoid his searching gaze. "You know the condition I impose—you are prepared to abide by it?"
Dulce hesitates. "Later on he will forget all this, and give his consent to my marrying—any one," she thinks, hurriedly, in spite of the other voice within her, that bids her beware. Then out loud she says, quietly:
"Yes."
Even if he should prove unrelenting, she tells herself, it will be better to be an old maid than an unloving wife. She will be rid of this hateful entanglement that has been embittering her life for months, and—and, of course, he won't keep her to this absurd arrangement after a while.
"You swear it?"
"I swear it," says Dulce, answering as one might in a dream. Hers is a dream, happy to recklessness, in which she is fast losing herself.
"It is an oath," he says again, as if to give her a last chance to escape.
"It is," replies she, softly, still wrapt in her dream of freedom. She may now love Roger without any shadow coming between them, and—ah! how divine a world it is!—he may perhaps love her too!