“No!” he cried, half startled by her manner, “I swear that you are wrong.”
“It is her portrait, monsieur.”
“It is no one’s portrait. Imagination, every stroke,” he cried. “Now let me see the face of the woman I really love.”
He raised one hand to snatch off the veil, but with a quick movement she sprang from him, and, with her eyes gleaming through the film, flung one white arm from the cloak, gave her wrist a turn, and he saw that she was holding the great Spanish knife dagger-wise, with the point towards his breast.
“Don’t come near me, or it will be your death,” she panted.
“Ah!” he said, with a half-laugh, as, stirred now to the deepest depths, he bent forward trying to penetrate her disguise, but without avail; “can you punish me so cruelly as that for loving you? Well, you have made me yours, and it is my fate. Better death than the misery I have suffered, the despair of losing you and not seeing you again.”
“It is a mockery!” she cried, and her voice now was strangely altered. “A man cannot love a woman whose face he has not seen.”
“You know that is not true,” he whispered, as he still advanced, and she now began to retreat—“you know I love you with all my soul. I have told you so, and you know it in your heart.”
“Keep back!” she cried huskily, as she retreated, keeping the knife-point toward his breast.
“No! Remove your veil.”