She stabbed him to the heart by what she said—by what she left unsaid. He took her little cold hand, put it to his lips—tried to speak.
'Don't,' she said, drawing it away and hiding her face on her knees. 'Don't say anything. It is not you, it is God and Nature that I accuse.'
Strange, bitter word!—word of revolt! He lay on his face beside her for many minutes afterwards, tasting the bitterness of it, revolving those other words she had said—'an illusion—a dream that breaks—must break.' Then he made a last effort. He came close to her, laid his arm timidly round her shoulders, bent his cheek to hers.
'Elise, listen to me a little. You say the debt is on my side—that is true—true—a thousand times true! I only ask you, implore you, to let me pay it. Let it be as you please—on what terms you please—servant or lover. All I pray for is to pay that debt, with my life, my heart.'
She shook her head softly, her face still hidden.
'When I am with you,' she said, as though the words were wrung out of her, 'I must be a woman. You agitate me, you divide my mind, and my force goes. There are both capacities in me, and one destroys the other. And I want—I want my art!'
She threw back her head with a superb gesture. But he did not flinch.
'You shall have it,' he said passionately, 'have it abundantly. Do you think I want to keep you for ever loitering here? Do you think I don't know what ambition and will mean? that I am only fit for kissing?'
He stopped almost with a smile, thinking of that harsh struggle to know and to have, in which his youth had been so far consumed night and day. Then words rushed upon him again, and he went on with a growing power and freedom.
'I never looked at a woman till I saw you!—never had a whim, a caprice. I have eaten my heart out with the struggle first for bread, then for knowledge. But when you came across me, then the world was all made new, and I became a new creature, your creature.'