“I promised you,” she said, shuddering convulsively from head to foot; “I swore to you that I would never breathe his name.”
“And yet you have not ceased to think of him.”
“That, monsieur, is the only fault I have committed. I think of him always; and just as you came, I was saying his name to myself.”
“Absence is killing you?”
Esther’s only answer was to hang her head as the sick do who already scent the breath of the grave.
“If you could see him——?” said he.
“It would be life!” she cried.
“And do you think of him only spiritually?”
“Ah, monsieur, love cannot be dissected!”
“Child of an accursed race! I have done everything to save you; I send you back to your fate.—You shall see him again.”