‘O God!’ he exclaimed, in an agony like a man writhing under a death-blow. ‘Have pity—have pity! Anything but this—any disgrace, any punishment, any ordeal. But oh! think of the forlorn, despairing prayer, “Entreat me not to leave thee!”’
The tears dropped fast from her eyes, and the beautiful face quivered in its struggle to be firm. What was that to him? He could only think her hard, unfeeling as the seaboard rock. She yielded not an inch.
‘It must be so,’ she repeated; ‘loyal and true, you will not fail me at last!’
His eyes flashed with anger. Man’s nature can scarce endure great sorrow without a tinge of resentment.
‘Loyalty and truth are soon forgotten in the absent,’ said he, bitterly. ‘Lip-service and flattery are more welcome to princes. I cannot refuse to make room for a newer favourite!’
She smiled on him gentle and forgiving through her tears.
‘You are unjust,’ she said, ‘and unkind; you know it is not so; and when you are far off it will be your punishment to think that you could have spoken such words to me to-day.’
The reaction of his feelings was frightful: he put his hand to his throat as if he was choking, and gasped out in broken syllables—
‘Forgive me! only forgive me before I go out from the light into eternal darkness and despair!’
‘Obedience?’ she asked in her turn, looking wistfully at the shore, which they were now approaching; and on their arrival at which, something perhaps warned her that she must take her last leave of Chastelâr and his unselfish, unexacting devotion.