"Forsaken!"
"Ah! what do you say?"
"Come—I say. This love is fatal; our destiny will be thus accomplished."
"For mercy's sake calm yourself; remember that it is but a few days since you wrote me, 'An insurmountable obstacle separates us.'"
"I can remember nothing but that I love you—I love you—I love you! This love has been subjected to every trial, it has increased in silence, it has resisted your affected indifference, it has penetrated your hidden tenderness, it has rendered me regardless of what I adored, disdainful of what I honoured. It burns my blood, it makes my reason wander, it overflows my heart. Paula, if you love me let us fly, or I die!"
"Alas! De Morville, and can you believe that you are suffering alone? Suffer—oh, no! I may now defy a life of torments; I can die; I have been loved, as I have dreamed of being loved—loved with madness, loved without calculation, scruple, or remorse—loved with such blindness that you do not even suspect the enormity of the sacrifices you offer to me, the depth of the abyss into which you would precipitate us."
"Paula, Paula, do not speak to me thus—you drive me mad: you do not know—no, you do not know, what is the seduction of a single thought, which absorbs all others in its current, always becoming deeper, wider, swifter. I, who until now could walk with head erect, dare no longer do so—there are looks I avoid—I dare not meet——"
"You? you?"
"Do you know what I have often said to myself—since an oath (which I will no longer observe) kept me estranged from you?"
"Do not speak thus."