He again endeavoured to avoid replying as she wished him to do. “Come, come,” he said, “you will do yourself harm by giving way to such grief as this; you know that I love you dearly.”
“Then swear to me that you will never, never marry her.”
“But I tell you that I love you, that you are the only one I love.”
Then she again threw her arms around him, and kissed him passionately upon the eyes. “Is it true?” she asked in a transport. “You love me, you love no one else? Oh! tell me so again, and kiss me, and promise me that you will never belong to her.”
Weak as he was he could not resist her ardent caresses and pressing entreaties. There came a moment of supreme cowardice and passion; her arms were around him and he forgot all but her, again and again repeating that he loved none other, and would never, never marry her daughter. At last he even sank so low as to pretend that he simply regarded that poor, infirm creature with pity. His words of compassionate disdain for her rival were like nectar to Eve, for they filled her with the blissful idea that it was she herself who would ever remain beautiful in his eyes and whom he would ever love....
At last silence fell between them, like an inevitable reaction after such a tempest of despair and passion. It disturbed Gerard. “Won’t you drink some tea?” he asked. “It is almost cold already.”
She was not listening, however. To her the reaction had come in a different form; and as though the inevitable explanation were only now commencing, she began to speak in a sad and weary voice. “My dear Gerard, you really cannot marry my daughter. In the first place it would be so wrong, and then there is the question of your name, your position. Forgive my frankness, but the fact is that everybody would say that you had sold yourself—such a marriage would be a scandal for both your family and mine.”
As she spoke she took hold of his hands, like a mother seeking to prevent her big son from committing some terrible blunder. And he listened to her, with bowed head and averted eyes. She now evinced no anger, no jealous rage; all such feelings seemed to have departed with the rapture of her passion.
“Just think of what people would say,” she continued. “I don’t deceive myself, I am fully aware that there is an abyss between your circle of society and ours. It is all very well for us to be rich, but money simply enlarges the gap. And it was all very fine for me to be converted, my daughter is none the less ‘the daughter of the Jewess,’ as folks so often say. Ah! my Gerard, I am so proud of you, that it would rend my heart to see you lowered, degraded almost, by a marriage for money with a girl who is deformed, who is unworthy of you and whom you could never love.”
He raised his eyes and looked at her entreatingly, anxious as he was to be spared such painful talk. “But haven’t I sworn to you, that you are the only one I love?” he said. “Haven’t I sworn that I would never marry her! It’s all over. Don’t let us torture ourselves any longer.”