"Wretched! aye! most, most wretched!" cried the girl, a large bright tear standing in either eye. "And art thou wretched, Paullus."
"Utterly wretched!" he said, with a deep groan, and buried his face for a moment in his hands. "Even before I looked upon you, thought of you, I was miserable! and now, now—words cannot paint my anguish, my self-degradation!"
"Aye! is it so?" she said, a faint sad smile flitting across her pallid lips. "Why I should feel abased and self-degraded, I can well comprehend. I, who have fallen from the high estate, the purity, the wealth, the consciousness of chaste and virtuous maidenhood! I, the despised, the castaway, the fallen! But thou, thou!—from thee I looked but for reproaches—the just reproaches I have earned by my faithless folly! I thought, indeed, to have found you wretched, writhing in the dark bonds which I, most miserable, cast around you; and cursing her who fettered you!"
"Cursing myself," he answered, "rather. Cursing my own insane and selfish passion, which alone trammelled me, which alone ruined one, better and brighter fifty fold than I!—alas! alas! Lucia."
And forgetful of all that he had heard to her disparagement from her bad father's lips, or, if he half remembered discrediting all in that moment of excitement, he flung himself at her feet, and grovelled like a crushed worm on the floor, in the degrading consciousness of guilt.
"Arise, arise for shame, young Arvina!" she said. "The ground, at a woman's feet, is no place for a man ever; least of all such a woman's. Arise, and mark me, when I tell you that, which to tell you, only, I came hither. Arise, I say, and make me not scorn the man, whom I admire, whom—wo is me! I love."
Paullus regained his feet slowly, and abashed; it seemed that all the pride and haughtiness of his character had given way at once. Mute and humiliated, he sank into a chair, while she continued standing erect and self-sustained before him by conscious, though new, rectitude of purpose.
"Mark me, I say, Arvina, when I tell you, that you are as free as air from the oath, with which I bound you. That wicked vow compels you only so long as I hold you pledged to its performance. Lo! it is nothing any more—for I, to whom alone of mortals you are bound, now and forever release you. The Gods, above and below, whom you called to witness it, are witnesses no more against you. For I annul it here; I give you back your plight. It is as though it never had been spoken!"
"Indeed? indeed? am I free?—Good, noble, generous, dear, Lucia, is it true? can it be? I am free, and at thy bidding?"
"Free as the winds of heaven, Paullus, that come whence no man knoweth, and go whither they will soever, and no mortal hindereth them! As free as the winds, Paullus," she repeated, "and I trust soon to be as happy."