"You asked for more!" said the girl, hoarsely. "You asked for my death as well as your own. And you wanted me to die in such a situation that all the world would say I had perished willingly with you. Could anything more cowardly be conceived! Was anything more dastardly ever devised! It was the morning of my wedding day; my father was waiting for me at home; my promised husband was preparing for the bridal; my friends were invited to the ceremony. What were all these to you? With Mephistophelian cunning you sent me a letter in another person's handwriting, saying that, if I would come to a certain address, and pay fifty dollars, several forged notes given by my father would be returned to me. You knew I would respond. You knew I would tell no one where I was going, as I did not expect to be detained more than an hour, and there was apparently the strongest reasons for secrecy. And when I was completely in your clutches you gave me the alternative of marrying you—ugh!—or of taking the poison you had so carefully prepared. Oh, how could you! how could you, when you professed to like me!"
There was a low gurgle in Archie Weil's throat, that he could not suppress. Fearful that it might be heard in that dead silence, Roseleaf shook his companion slightly. Mingled with his other emotions there now came to Weil a stupefied wonder at the apparent coolness of the novelist.
"When one is willing to die for his love, it should not be questioned," said the negro. "I could not have you in life—I wanted you in death. I wanted the world, which had despised me, to think a beautiful woman had preferred to die with me rather than marry a man she did not wish to wed. But why should we recall that dreadful day and night? You won the victory. You, with your superior finesse, triumphed over the African as your race has always triumphed over mine. I demanded love or death. You dissuaded me from both. And the next day I permitted you to depart, and saw vanish with you the last hope of happiness I shall ever feel."
The rich voice of the speaker broke completely at the close, but the girl who heard him seemed to feel no sympathy for his distress.
"Always yourself!" she exclaimed. "Do you ever think of the life you left to me—a life hardly more kind than the murder you contemplated. Before you opened the portals that you had meant for my tomb you made me swear never to reveal where I had passed those hours. Never, no matter what the provocation, was I to utter one word to implicate you in the tragedy that had ruined two households. You were the one to be protected—I the one to suffer! Had it not been for the sacrifice to my reputation in being found there with you dead—no explanation being possible from my closed lips—I would have accepted the alternative and swallowed the poison rather than live to bear what I do to-day!"
Weil closed his eyes again. His brain was swimming.
"And you are sure," asked the negro, after a pause, "that you have not violated that promise? You can still swear that you have never, even by a hint, given the least cause of suspicion against me?"
"Never!" said the girl. "I consider my oath binding, notwithstanding the manner in which it was obtained. You may live in what peace your conscience allows you, free at least from that fear."
The negro evidently believed her, for he heaved a sigh of relief.