“Since you love me so well,”—he said—“Kneel down and worship me!”
She dropped on her knees—and clasped her hands,—I strove to move,—to speak,—but some resistless force held me dumb and motionless;—the light from the stained glass window fell upon her face, and showed its fairness illumined by a smile of perfect rapture.
“With every pulse of my being I worship you!” she murmured passionately—“My king!—my god! The cruel things you say but deepen my love for you,—you can kill, but you can never change me! For one kiss of your lips I would die,—for one embrace from you I would give my soul! ...”
“Have you one to give?” he asked derisively—“Is it not already disposed of? You should make sure of that first! Stay where you are and let me look at you! So!—a woman, [p 366] wearing a husband’s name, holding a husband’s honour, clothed in the very garments purchased with a husband’s money, and newly risen from a husband’s side, steals forth thus in the night, seeking to disgrace him and pollute herself by the vulgarest unchastity! And this is all that the culture and training of nineteenth-century civilization can do for you? Myself, I prefer the barbaric fashion of old times, when rough savages fought for their women as they fought for their cattle, treated them as cattle, and kept them in their place, never dreaming of endowing them with such strong virtues as truth and honour! If women were pure and true, then the lost happiness of the world might return to it,—but the majority of them are like you, liars, ever pretending to be what they are not. I may do what I choose with you, you say? torture you, kill you, brand you with the name of outcast in the public sight, and curse you before Heaven—if I will only love you!—all this is melodramatic speech, and I never cared for melodrama at any time. I shall neither kill you, brand you, curse you, nor love you;—I shall simply—call your husband!”
I stirred from my hiding-place,—then stopped. She sprang to her feet in an insensate passion of anger and shame.
“You dare not!” she panted—“You dare not so ... disgrace me!”
“Disgrace you!” he echoed scornfully—“That remark comes rather late, seeing you have disgraced yourself!”
But she was now fairly roused. All the savagery and obstinacy of her nature was awakened, and she stood like some beautiful wild animal at bay, trembling from head to foot with the violence of her emotions.
“You repulse me,—you scorn me!” she muttered in hurried fierce accents that scarcely rose above an angry whisper—“You make a mockery of my heart’s anguish and despair, but you shall suffer for it! I am your match,—nay your equal! You shall not spurn me a second time! You ask, will I love you when I know who you are,—it is your pleasure to deal in mysteries, but I have no mysteries—I am a woman who loves you with all the passion of a life,—and [p 367] I will murder myself and you, rather than live to know that I have prayed you for your love in vain. Do you think I came unprepared?—no!” and she suddenly drew from her bosom a short steel dagger with a jewelled hilt, a curio I recognized as one of the gifts to her on her marriage; “Love me, I say!—or I will stab myself dead here at your feet, and cry out to Geoffrey that you have murdered me!”
She raised the weapon aloft,—I almost sprang forward—but I drew back again quickly as I saw Lucio seize the hand that held the dagger and drag it firmly down,—while, wresting the weapon from her clutch he snapped it asunder and flung the pieces on the floor.