The girl still stood rooted; the eyes, which she had first fixed on him, still remained wide-openly riveted.
“Wilt thou not speak, Isabel?” said Pierre, terrified at her frozen, immovable aspect, yet too terrified to manifest his own terror to her; and still coming slowly near her. She slightly raised one arm, as if to grasp some support; then turned her head slowly sideways toward the door by which she had entered; then her dry lips slowly parted—“My bed; lay me; lay me!”
The verbal effort broke her stiffening enchantment of frost; her thawed form sloped sidelong into the air; but Pierre caught her, and bore her into her own chamber, and laid her there on the bed.
“Fan me; fan me!”
He fanned the fainting flame of her life; by-and-by she turned slowly toward him.
“Oh! that feminine word from thy mouth, dear Pierre:—that she, that she!”
Pierre sat silent, fanning her.
“Oh, I want none in the world but thee, my brother—but thee, but thee! and, oh God! am I not enough for thee? Bare earth with my brother were all heaven for me; but all my life, all my full soul, contents not my brother.”
Pierre spoke not; he but listened; a terrible, burning curiosity was in him, that made him as heartless. But still all that she had said thus far was ambiguous.
“Had I known—had I but known it before! Oh bitterly cruel to reveal it now. That she! That she!”