“Yes, it is I!” said Camors. “Give me your hand.”
She gave it to him.
“You were right, Charlotte,” he said, after a moment of silence. “Ties like ours can not be broken. I have reflected on everything. I was seized with a momentary cowardice, for which I have reproached myself bitterly, and for which, moreover, I have been sufficiently punished. But I come to you to ask your forgiveness.”
The Marquise led him tenderly into the deep shadow of the great plane-trees that surrounded the lake; she knelt before him with theatric grace, and fixed on him her swimming eyes. She covered his head with kisses. He raised her and pressed her to his heart.
“But you do not wish that crime to be committed?” he said in a low voice.
She bent her head with mournful indecision.
“For that matter,” he added, bitterly, “it would only make us worthier of each other; for, as to myself, they have already believed me capable of it.”
He took her arm and recounted to her briefly the scene of the night before.
He told her he had not returned home, and never should. This was the result of his mournful meditations. To attempt an explanation with those who had so mortally outraged him—to open to them the depth of his heart—to allude to the criminal thought they had accused him of—he had repelled with horror, the evening before, when proposed by another. He thought of all this; but this humiliation—if he could have so abased himself—would have been useless. How could he hope to conquer by these words the distrust capable of creating such suspicions?
He confusedly divined the origin, and understood that this distrust, envenomed by remembrance of the past, was incurable.