Francezka stood as if turned to stone for a moment—one of those moments in which Time seems no more. Then she moved a little back, averting her face from Gaston, with a look, never to be forgotten—love, shame, despair—crying aloud from her eyes. But as Gaston spoke, she turned again, full toward him, and raised both of her white arms.
“Dearest,” she cried, in her old, sweet, penetrating voice. “I do not ask why you did not come before. You could not—you could not come until now!”
At that, Regnard stepped forward, and raised his hand to separate the two.
“Wait,” he said to Gaston. “She was your wife for one week. She has been my wife nearly two years. She shall remain so. I, too, loved her well, from my boyhood—and was it to be expected that I should let that childish fancy for you stand between her and me, when I thought you dead?”
I think neither Gaston nor Francezka heard him; but suddenly as a bird flies from its perch, so Francezka flew to Gaston and rested her head upon his breast. Not even Regnard dared to lay a sacrilegious hand upon her there.
“I have been the most miserable woman on God’s earth,” she said to Gaston, raising her head, and looking him full in the face—“and I can not survive this 463 hour. Do not ask me to live—I can not live. I was thinking, just now, as I sat and played the air we loved so well, that I must, this very night, seek rest in death—for I suspected the truth only a little while ago. But, love, this hour atones for much. You know now how I loved you—how I remembered you. If I was dull of apprehension—if, after seven years, I accepted too quickly the deception practised on me—well, it was because I loved you so well. But I must depart; there is no place on earth for me.”
For answer Gaston kissed her tenderly.
“Would you leave me now?” he asked. “Have not I, too, loved you and sought you? And shall not our happiness swallow up our misfortune, and the crimes committed against us, after those crimes are avenged?”
Then, as calmly as a summer day, he placed Francezka in a chair, and, turning to his brother, said:
“To-night, you or I must die.”