“We are the creatures of opportunity, of circumstance,” he said; “we must bow to the Doctrine of the Inevitable. Inexorable circumstance waited too long to rivet our links; that is all. Circumstance is rarely kind save to the commonplace, for it is only the commonplace who never make mistakes. But no circumstance shall stand between us now. I love you, and you are mine.”
He drew her arms about his neck and kissed her softly on her eyes, her face, her mouth.
“You have suffered,” he whispered, “but let it be over and forgotten. Poor girl! how fate all your life has stranded you in the desert, and how you have beaten your wings against the ground and fought to get out. Come to me and forget—forget—”
She tightened her arm about his neck and pressed his face against her shoulder. Then she took the cork from the phial hidden in her sleeve. With a sudden instinct Quintard threw back his head, and the movement knocked the phial from her hand. It fell to the floor and broke.
For a moment he looked at her without speaking. Under the reproach in his eyes her lids fell.
He spoke at last. “Have you not thought of me once, Hermia? Are you so utterly absorbed in yourself, in your desire to bury your misery in oblivion, that you have not a thought left for my suffering, for my loneliness, and for my remorse? Do you suppose I could ever forget that you killed yourself for me? You are afraid to live; you can find no courage to carry through life the gnawing at your soul. You have pictured every horror of such an existence. And yet, by your own act, you willingly abandon one whom you profess to love, to a life full of the torments which you so terribly and elaborately comprehend.”
Hermia lay still a moment, then slipped from his arms and rose to her feet. For a few moments she walked slowly up and down the room, then stood before him. The mask of her face was the same, but through it a new spirit shone. It was the supreme moment of Hermia’s life. She might not again touch the depths of her old selfishness, but as surely would she never a second time brush her wings against the peaks of self’s emancipation.
“You are right,” she said; “I had not thought of you. I have sulked in the lap of my own egoism all my life. That a human soul might get outside of itself has never occurred to me—until now. I will live and rejoice in my own abnegation, for the sacrifice will give me something the better to offer you. I have suffered, and I shall suffer as long as I live—but I believe you will be the happier for it.”
He stood up and grasped her hands. “Hermia!” he exclaimed beneath his breath, “Hermia, promise it! Promise me that you will live, that you will never kill yourself. There might be wild moments of remorse—promise.”
“I promise,” she said.