“I will repay you now for your hospitality,” he said, “and then we shall be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving myself up. After all, what should I do now with my life?”
“You could repent,” answered Hélène, and her glance conveyed such hope as only glows in a young girl’s eyes.
“I shall never repent,” said the murderer in a sonorous voice, as he raised his head proudly.
“His hands are stained with blood,” the father said.
“I will wipe it away,” she answered.
“But do you so much as know whether he cares for you?” said her father, not daring now to look at the stranger.
The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within seemed to glow through Hélène’s beauty, grave and maidenly though it was, coloring and bringing into relief, as it were, the least details, the most delicate lines in her face. The stranger, with that terrible face still blazing in his eyes, gave one tender glance to her enchanting loveliness, then he spoke, his tones revealing how deeply he had been moved.
“And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so discharge my debt of two hours of existence to your father; is not this love, love for yourself alone?”
“Then do you too reject me?” Hélène’s cry rang painfully through the hearts of all who heard her. “Farewell, then, to you all; I will die.”
“What does this mean?” asked the father and mother.