She looked at him with a terrified air, and said, "And supposing that I had committed some abominable crime—what then?"
"What then? I should protect you, fold you to my arms, and help to soften your bitter remorse into sweet repentance. I would share your agony and delight in doing so. Whatever this secret is, it would but deepen the sympathy between us. Oh, Mary! Love can cure every wound."
"Oh, mercy!" she cried in tones of anguish. "Dr. Duncan! Dr. Duncan! do not talk to me like this. I shall go mad if you do. I tell you again I can never know love—never! never! I am the most miserable creature on earth, and I cannot tell you why."
He seized her arm in his passion, and said in a voice fierce and tremulous: "Mary! Mary! this is all wrong. You are throwing away your whole life's happiness for an utterly false idea. Oh, my sweet love, tell me all! tell me all! I repeat from my heart, that nothing you could possibly disclose can lessen my affection. Put the idea altogether out of your mind that whatever you tell me can make any difference. Mary! were you the lowest of creatures, I would love you all the more. It would be all the sweeter to know that I had saved you. Whatever you are, I am your lover, your slave. Ah, Mary! with such a love as ours will be, we will be the happiest of people. In spite of anything that has been, you will be all the world to me until death, Mary!—until death."
The man had made the girl's heart thrill responsive to his own great passion, and she could conceal this no longer. "Oh, spare me! spare me!" she whispered.
"Then you do love me," he exclaimed.
She closed her eyes as she spoke in a dreamy voice. "Oh, spare me! this will kill me. Oh, my love! for I do love you—as I can scarcely believe woman ever loved man before—you don't know what you ask."
He folded her in his arms and kissed her lips, but she turned from him, and rising from the seat stood before him very pale, and trembling, while the secret thoughts of her heart, that she would fain have hidden for ever, but could not in that weak moment conceal, were revealed to him in her passionate words. "Yes, I love you! I will die soon, so it cannot matter much that I tell you this. I love you! but this must be the last time I see you. We two cannot love each other—oh, that I could tell you: and then be clasped in your arms and die there straightaway—die in your arms dear!—for I cannot tell you and live. Oh, how delicious it would be—oh, my love!" she clenched her fists and looked up to the skies—"do not raise these visions of Paradise to me—only to madden me with the contrast between them and what must be—glimpses of Heaven through the black clouds of Hell."
She paused and began to weep.
Her lover stood by her with both her hands in his.