The youth trembled from head to foot and gazed with a blanched face at the young girl, who still clasped him in a convulsive embrace.
"What are you thinking of? You would come with me—to sea?"
"I should be happy anywhere with you. I should not fear the storms, the sight of your face would give me courage. I should be happy if I might share with you every peril, every privation, which you must now encounter alone; and if it were not God's will that we should ever attain our goal, I could at least die with you."
William's face clouded still more. What love! What self-sacrifice! A Paradise opened before him. But at the portal of that Paradise stood an angel with a flaming sword, saying: "Back, your name is Robert Barthelemy."
"I have often thought," said the girl trembling, "that some day when you return and ask, 'Where is Julietta? Why doesn't she come to meet me?' they will lead you to a flowery mound and say: 'She waited long, waited until her heart broke, she faded away and now rests here'—will you not then say to yourself: 'Why did I not take her with me?'"
"Do not talk so! Do not talk so!" exclaimed the lover, in a voice choked with anguish. "What you ask is impossible. Go back."
The girl grew as white as a lily, her arms fell from her lover's neck, her beautiful head drooped upon her breast.
He caught the fainting figure in his arms and laid it gently on the grass, pressed a kiss on the colorless face, and then rushed through the copse like a madman.
Barthelemy thrust the scarlet plume in his hat and joined his men; no tears glittered in his eyes, which now flashed fire; he was once more the proud, bold, reckless corsair chief.