"You can do that; but don't you see that that is utterly impossible in my case? Or do you think Baron Barnewitz, young Grieben, or whoever else belongs to that clique, would leave me unnoticed and unobserved?"
"They shall not come to our house; not one of them shall come. I will receive nobody; and those whom I receive, I will receive so that they will not call again!"
"My dear child, those are all pretty bubbles, which would burst at the very first breath of reality. And if you were really to enter the lists against your society for my sake--where after all you would be infallibly worsted--would your husband make the same sacrifice for the sake of a man whom he certainly does not love, and has good reason not to love?"
"Arthur does whatever I wish; I can ask Arthur to do anything."
"And if he were such a fool," said Oswald, violently; "I will not play this blind-man's-buff. If your husband really loves you, so much the worse for you and me and him. I know that you women possess in such cases the marvellous power of not letting the right hand know what the left hand does, but we men are made differently; at least I am. I do not talk to you of moral scruples, which we manage at needs to overcome when we thoroughly despise the man whose confidence we abuse; but I should suffer unspeakable anguish, for which all the delights of love would be no compensation, if I saw with my own eyes how the man whom I despise was placing his arm in coarse familiarity around your waist; if I were to leave you and knew that you--oh, I cannot, I will not speak of what I do not dare to think."
Emily threw herself, sobbing, into Oswald's arms. "Oh, let me always stay with you! let me always stay with you! let me never go back to my house! I will not see him again! he shall never again touch my hand. I have never loved him, you know! Oh, Oswald, have pity on me! let me not suffer so terribly for something I did, after all, but from passionate love for you!"
"Poor, unhappy child," whispered Oswald, pressing her tenderly to his heart, "poor unhappy child; and unhappy through me! That is the bitterest part! Emily, sweet one, dear one, don't cry so! Your sobbing tears my heart. Leave the man who has already made you so unhappy, and who can do nothing but make you still unhappier. Forget that you ever saw him! Go back to your husband! You will not be happy with him; but who is happy in this world? You will get accustomed to him, as man gets accustomed to everything at last. And thus the stream of life will roll on quietly, a little stormy perhaps in the beginning, but gradually more slowly and lazily, until it falls finally into the Dead Sea of stolid resignation. Oh God! oh God! Come, Emily, it is of no avail to pity one another. The night is cold; your hair, your clothes, are as wet from the falling mist as your face from your tears. You must go home."
He placed his arm around her waist, and led her back the way they had come. Emily suffered it all. Her suppressed sobbing ceased after a while; she seemed to comprehend the helplessness of her situation. But suddenly, when they had reached the bridge which led out of the park, she stopped, seized both of Oswald's hands, and said with a low firm voice:
"I have considered it, and it is so. I will not live without you henceforth, since I know how glorious life is with you. If you cannot love me, I conjure you by all that is sacred to you, tell me. I will not say a word in reply--not a word. I will not cry--not complain. You shall not be troubled by me. I know what I shall do then."
"Emily!"