“Lucio,”—she murmured—“Lucio, ... what is it ... what have I done?—I who would not wound you for the world?—I who but seek your love, Lucio, to repay it in full with such fond passion and tenderness as you have never known! For this and this only, I married Geoffrey,—I chose your friend as husband because he was your friend!” (O perfidious woman!) “and because I saw his foolish egotism—his pride in himself and his riches,—his blind confidence in me and in you;—I knew that I could, after a time, follow the fashion of many another woman in my set and choose my lover,—ah, my lover!—I had chosen him already,—I have chosen you, Lucio!—yes, though you hate me you cannot hinder me from loving you,—I shall love you till I die!”
He turned his gaze upon her steadily,—the gloom deepening on his brows.
“And after you die?” he said—“Will you love me then?”
There was a stern derision in his tone which appeared to vaguely terrify her.
“After death! ...” she stammered.
“Yes,—after death!” he repeated sombrely—“There is an after;—as your mother knows!” A faint exclamation escaped her,—she fixed her eyes upon him affrightedly. “Fair lady,” he went on—“your mother was, like yourself, a voluptuary. She, like you, made up her mind to ‘follow the fashion’ as you put it, as soon as her husband’s ‘blind’ or willing confidence was gained. She chose, not one lover but many. You know her end. In the written but miscomprehended laws of Nature, a diseased body is the natural expression of a diseased mind,—her face in her last days was the reflex of her soul. You shudder?—the [p 365] thought of her hideousness is repellent to your self-conscious beauty? Yet the evil that was in her is also in you,—it festers in your blood slowly but surely, and as you have no faith in God to cure the disease, it will have its way—even at the final moment when death clutches at your throat and stops your breathing. The smile upon your frozen lips then will not be the smile of a saint, believe me, but of a sinner! Death is never deceived, though life may be. And afterwards ... I ask again, will you love me, do you think? ... when you know WHO I am?”
I was myself startled at his manner of putting this strange question;—I saw her lift her hands beseechingly towards him, and she seemed to tremble.
“When I know who you are!” she repeated wonderingly—“Do I not know? You are Lucio,—Lucio Rimânez—my love,—my love!—whose voice is my music,—whose beauty I adore,—whose looks are my heaven”...
“And Hell!” he interposed, with a low laugh—“Come here!”
She went towards him eagerly, yet falteringly. He pointed to the ground,—I saw the rare blue diamond he always wore on his right hand, flash like a flame in the moonrays.