“Say that you will not die alone.”
“Be it so.”
“To confess every thing would never save you, but would most assuredly ruin me. Is that what you want? Would your fate appear less cruel to you, if there were two victims instead of one?”
He stopped her by a threatening gesture, and cried,—
“Are you always the same? I am sinking, I am drowning; and she calculates, she bargains! And she said she loved me!”
“Jacques!” broke in the countess.
And drawing close up to him, she said,—
“Ah! I calculate, I bargain? Well, listen. Yes, it is true. I did value my reputation as an honest woman more highly, a thousand times more, than my life; but, above my life and my reputation, I valued you. You are drowning, you say. Well, then, let us flee. One word from you, and I leave all,—honor, country, family, husband, children. Say one word, and I follow you without turning my head, without a regret, without a remorse.”
Her whole body was shivering from head to foot; her bosom rose and fell; her eyes shone with unbearable brilliancy.
Thanks to the violence of her action, her dress, put on in great haste, had opened, and her dishevelled hair flowed in golden masses over her bosom and her shoulders, which matched the purest marble in their dazzling whiteness.