“I’ve already told you. His fate lies with you!”
“No, no—not that! This cannot—must not be! Anything but that——”
“Then it is you who condemn him by your own act!”
“My own act! I, who would gladly die to save him! But no, it is not my act—not my act! I cannot—I will not do what will bring horror, misery, degradation!”
“You speak of a union with the Chancellor of the Realm as degradation?”
“A union with any man when a woman’s whole heart and soul are given to another means misery, degradation. How can you ask it of me—how yourself consent! For I love him—I love him—I love only him!”
“Two minutes!”
“You don’t realize—you don’t understand! I tell you no, no, this cannot—this must not be. Anything else you ask, but not that! For your own happiness spare me—for your own conscience—your own future peace, save him!”
“Not all the angels in heaven, or devils in hell, shall turn me from my path! You are sacrificing everything to a woman’s whim. Time will teach you forgetfulness of this folly and—love!”
“A woman’s whim! Ah, the wise Chancellor understands so little of women that he thinks them mere butterflies. But I say to you that when a woman’s spirit is once profoundly stirred, she becomes more firm, more implacable, than the sternest man among you all! Her love knows no measure, no reason, no calculation; her hate has no weakening. Were I to become your wife, I could never forget that the man I adore had been torn from me by force and fraud. My thoughts would always be of him; my only moments of happiness those when I closed my eyes and cheated my senses with the dream that I lay within his arms. The honor, the rank, the titles you offer me, would be nothing, for would they not have been bought at the price of his—of my—happiness! And you—I should hate you!”