She covered her face with her hands. Then, after a pause, she shook off her weakness with a resolute gesture. Her voice became stronger.
"Destiny has willed that I should live until now. Destiny has willed that you should learn the truth from your mother. From your mother! Yesterday evening, when you came into this room, you knew all and you said nothing, and, before your mother, you kissed the cheek I offered you. Before I die, permit me to kiss your hands. It is the only favor I implore of you. Now, I await your commands. I am ready for anything. Speak."
I said:
"It is necessary that you should live."
"Impossible, Tullio," she cried. "Impossible! Have you thought of what will happen if I live?"
"I have thought of it. It is necessary that you should live."
"What horror!"
And she started violently—an instinctive gesture of fright.
"Listen, Tullio. Henceforth you know everything; henceforth suicide can no longer serve me to hide my shame from you, nor keep me from appearing before you. You know all, and here we are together, and we can still look at one another, we can still speak to one another! The question is an entirely different one. I no longer seek to elude your vigilance in order to kill myself. On the contrary, I wish you to help me in disappearing in the most natural way possible; without awakening any suspicion around us. I have two poisons—morphine and corrosive sublimate. But perhaps poisons are useless; it is difficult to conceal poisoning. And it is necessary that my death should seem to be involuntary, caused by accident, by a mishap. You understand? It is the only way out of it. The secret will remain between us two."
She began to speak rapidly, firmly and deliberately, as if she argued in order to persuade me to consent to some desirable compact and not to a compact of complicity in the execution of an extravagant project. I let her go on. A sort of singular fascination rooted me to the spot—constrained me to look at and listen to the fragile and pale creature, possessed by such impetuous waves of moral energy.