“Your place was the stage, Madam!” he said—“You should have been the chief female mime at some ‘high-class’ theatre! You would have adorned the boards, drawn the mob, had as many lovers, stagey and private as you pleased, been invited to act at Windsor, obtained a payment-jewel from the Queen, and written your name in her autograph album. That should undoubtedly have been your ‘great’ career—you were born for it—made for it! You would have been as brute-souled as you are now,—but that would not have mattered,—mimes are exempt from chastity!”
In the action of breaking the dagger, and in the intense bitterness of his speech he had thrust her back a few paces from him, and she stood breathless and white with rage, eyeing him in mingled passion and terror. For a moment she was silent,—then advancing slowly with the feline suppleness of movement which had given her a reputation for grace exceeding that of any woman in England, she said in deliberately measured accents—
“Lucio Rimânez, I have borne your insults as I would bear my death at your hands, because I love you. You loathe me, you say—you repulse me,—I love you still! You cannot cast me off—I am yours! You shall love me, or I will die,—one of the two. Take time for thought,—I leave you to-night,—I give you all to-morrow to consider,—love me,—give [p 368] me yourself,—be my lover,—and I will play the comedy of social life as well as any other woman,—so well that my husband shall never know. But refuse me again as you have refused me now, and I will make away with myself. I am not ‘acting,’—I am speaking calmly and with conviction; I mean what I say!”
“Do you?” queried Lucio coldly—“Let me congratulate you! Few women attain to such coherence!”
“I will put an end to this life of mine;” she went on, paying no sort of heed to his words—“I cannot endure existence without your love, Lucio!” and a dreary pathos vibrated in her voice—“I hunger for the kisses of your lips,—the clasp of your arms! Do you know—do you ever think of your own power?—the cruel, terrible power of your eyes, your speech, your smile,—the beauty which makes you more like an angel than a man,—and have you no pity? Do you think that ever a man was born like you?” he looked at her as she said this, and a faint smile rested on his lips—“When you speak, I hear music—when you sing, it seems to me that I understand what the melodies of a poet’s heaven must be;—surely, surely you know that your very looks are a snare to the warm weak soul of a woman! Lucio!—” and emboldened by his silence, she stole nearer to him—“Meet me to-morrow in the lane near the cottage of Mavis Clare....”
He started as if he had been stung—but not a word escaped him.
“I heard all you said to her the other night;” she continued, advancing yet a step closer to his side—“I followed you,—and I listened. I was well-nigh mad with jealousy—I thought—I feared—you loved her,—but I was wrong. I never do thank God for anything,—but I thanked God that night that I was wrong! She was not made for you—I am! Meet me outside her house, where the great white rose-tree is in bloom—gather one,—one of those little autumnal roses and give it to me—I shall understand it as a signal—a signal that I may come to you to-morrow night and not be cursed [p 369] or repulsed, but loved,—loved!—ah Lucio! promise me!—one little rose!—the symbol of an hour’s love!—then let me die; I shall have had all I ask of life!”
With a sudden swift movement, she flung herself upon his breast, and circling her arms about his neck, lifted her face to his. The moonbeams showed me her eyes alit with rapture, her lips trembling with passion, her bosom heaving, ... the blood surged up to my brain, and a red mist swam before my sight, ... would Lucio yield? Not he!—he loosened her desperate hands from about his throat, and forced her back, holding her at arm’s length.
“Woman, false and accurséd!” he said in tones that were sonorous and terrific—“You know not what you seek! All that you ask of life shall be yours in death!—this is the law,—therefore beware what demands you make lest they be too fully granted! A rose from the cottage of Mavis Clare?—a rose from the garden of Eden!—they are one and the same to me! Not for my gathering or yours! Love and joy? For the unfaithful there is no love,—for the impure there is no joy. Add no more to the measure of my hatred and vengeance!—Go while there is yet time,—go and front the destiny you have made for yourself—for nothing can alter it! And as for me, whom you love,—before whom you have knelt in idolatrous worship—” and a low fierce laugh escaped him—“why,—restrain your feverish desires, fair fiend!—have patience!—we shall meet ere long!”
I could not bear the scene another moment, and springing from my hiding-place, I dragged my wife away from him and flung myself between them.