"And you do not love me. It has often seemed to me as if it were your hatred that pursued me. You and your kind cannot love."
Rojanow kept silence in bewilderment. Who taught this young woman, still so inexperienced in life, to look so deeply into his inmost heart? He had not made clear to himself yet how inseparably hate and love were combined in his passion.
"And you tell this to the writer of Arivana!" he burst out in bitterness. "They have called my work the high song of love----"
"Then they have let themselves be deceived by the veil of the Oriental legend in which you shrouded your characters. They saw then only the East Indian priest sink with his beloved one under an iron, inhuman law. You are perhaps a great poet, and perhaps the world overwhelms you with praise, but it tells me something different--this fervent, ardent doctrine of your Arivana. It has taught me to know its creator--a man who does not believe in anything, and to whom nothing in the world is sacred; no duty and no vow; no man's honor and no woman's virtue--who would not hesitate to drag the highest into the dust as play for his passion. I still believe in duty and honor; I still believe in myself, and with this faith I offer defiance to the doom you hold so triumphantly before me. I could force myself to death, but never to your arms!"
She stood before him, not as just now in trembling fear--in the tortured wrestling with a secret struggle, It seemed as if, with each of the annihilating words, one ring of the chain which held possession of her so mysteriously was broken. Her eyes met fully and freely the dark look which had kept her a prisoner so long; the charm was broken now and she felt it, and breathed like one rescued.
Again that flash in the distance--noiseless, without the rumbling of thunder--but it was as if heaven had opened in all its vastness. Fantastic formation of clouds was in this flaring light--forms which seemed to wrestle and struggle with each other, born of the storm, and yet that bank of cloud stood motionless at the horizon--and just as motionless stood the man, whose dark features showed now an ashy paleness in the glare of the lightning.
His eyes were fixed upon the young woman, but the wild fire in them had died out, and his voice had a strange sound as he said: "And this is the opinion I asked for? I am nothing more in your eyes than an--outcast?"
"A lost man, perhaps. You have forced me to this confession."
Hartmut slowly retreated a few steps.
"Lost!" he repeated hoarsely. "In your meaning, perhaps, yes. You may rest assured, gracious lady, I shall not approach you any more. One does not desire to hear such words a second time--you stand so high and proud upon your virtue and, judge so severely. Of course you have no idea what a hot, wild life can make of a person who wanders restlessly, without home and family, through the world. You are right--I have not believed in anything, either upon high or here upon the earth--until this hour."