"To-morrow at eight," she repeated.
A minute afterwards he stood alone in the sunlit space behind the hotel.
He rubbed his eyes, seeming to waken slowly from a lovely and most improbable dream.
At first he felt only exhilaration, the joy of a near approach to a long-desired but unhoped-for goal.
"To-morrow at eight," he whispered to himself several times. Then on a sudden the keen edge of his delight was blunted; his joy seemed to slip through his fingers; he could not retain it.
He recalled the entire scene through which he had just passed. He saw the girl's expression of face, he heard the sound of her voice. It was all lovely, exquisitely lovely, but, after all, there was something inharmonious, unnatural in it. This very girl who had of her own free impulse proposed to fly with him had never, during their long consultation, been impelled to utter one word of affection for him, and he himself was conscious that he could not have demanded it of her. She had been gentle, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing,--yes, self-sacrificing even to fanaticism. Self-sacrificing! he repeated the word to himself in an undertone: it had seized hold of his imagination as portraying precisely her attitude and bearing. Self-sacrificing,--yes, but not the slightest evidence had she given him of warm, passionate affection. He frowned, as he walked on thoughtfully.
"How does she picture to herself the future, I wonder?" Distinctly in his memory rang her words, "I know that I resign all intercourse with my fellow-beings, saving with yourself; that my only refuge on earth will be at your side; I know that I shall be a lost creature in the eyes of the world; and yet, if I can only cherish the conviction that I can thereby redeem your shattered existence, that I can purify and ennoble your life, I am ready."
How ravishing she had been whilst uttering these words! and beautiful, pathetic words they were; but----
He shivered, in spite of the Venetian May sunshine. Some chord of overwrought feeling suddenly snapped; a stifling sensation of ungrateful and almost angry rebellion against an undeserved happiness assailed him. How could this be? He was paralyzed by a cowardly dread.
He was ashamed of this revulsion of feeling, and struggled against it with angry self-contempt, but he could not shake it off. He had a vague consciousness that he must always be thus shamed in Erika's presence. To avoid being so he should have to incite himself to a degree of high-souled enthusiasm which was unnatural and inconvenient. "Purify and ennoble his life!" What did that mean? "Purify? ennoble?"