"To the end?" said he. "Oh! Christiane, if you were only more gentle, if your grief had not made you insensible to the pain of others, you would spare me further words. Have I not already told you, that from the first moment I saw you I recognized the inevitable destiny that bound me to you, and have vainly striven with all the powers of the soul and mind to escape the thraldom? I have concealed from myself nothing that could help to stifle such a flame--your obstinacy, your atheism, your indifference to all that usually charms and misleads your sex. I have told myself that I had no happiness to expect from this love, no future, no help for my own needs; the thirst for rule which you falsely impute to me--or no, let me confess it, which perhaps usually sways me--was never so ignominiously baffled as by you. Everything that can offend the vanity, the pride, even the honor of a man, or repel his affection, I have experienced at your hands. And now, Christiane, I ask you on your conscience: do you doubt the power of nature, or as I call it, the mystical force, which alone is capable, in spite of everything, of bringing me back to your feet? I was fully prepared to be misunderstood, reproached, abused. But that is the very miracle of love: it prefers to be trampled under foot by the beloved object, rather than caressed by an indifferent hand. Now have you still the heart to call me a fiend, only anxious to get your soul into his power? Your soul? oh God! I have given up the hope of winning it, spite of the pain it has cost me, I despair of initiating you into the depths of my life with God, making you a sharer in the bliss of my fears and longings. But believe me, Christiane, there is an earthly compensation for the highest divine ecstacies, of which all minds are not capable, a compensation which matures the soul and at the same time prepares it for higher degrees of knowledge: the blending of spiritual and sensual passion, that thrills me with ardent yearning if I only touch your hand, meet your eyes, feel your breath on my face. No one, no matter how much he may have suffered, issues from this bath of the soul unrejuvenated and unrefreshed, and indeed, my friend, for your own sake I wish you had the courage to rush with closed eyes into the flames from which the poor mortal creature, purged from all the dross of earthly sorrow, emerges purified as a new, divinely consoled being.
"This is the mystery," he continued as she was still silent: "no one comes to the Father save by the Son, no one can understand heavenly love who closes the heart to earthly affection. You have not found your God, my friend, because you would not yield to the power of your god-man, your Saviour, who would have delivered you from yourself. Do you know for what sin Lucifer was expelled from the presence of the eternal one? He wished to remain in presumptuous innocence, disdained to submit to the power of love. Now he is freezing amid his flames, as you, Christiane, shiver with cold while your whole nature is on fire. Oh! my friend, you are silent. Would that I had an angel's tongue to win from your soul some echo, thaw your frozen heart. You say you have a horror of me. Oh! it is not of me, the poor weak man, whom a single glance of yours can curb; you dread your own fall, which must precede your deliverance, the loss by which you are to gain, the death through which you must live. 'So a heart trembles at the approach of love, as if it were menaced by death.' But you have a strong soul, Christiane, you will shake off this cowardice and risk all to gain all, death for life, sin for mercy, hate for love--
"I knew it," he whispered, and his voice grew almost mournful, without losing its passionate impetuosity, "when I first saw you and my heart instantly whispered your destiny: I knew this hour would come, resolutely as you might struggle, painful as were the thorns pride thrust into my soul. I have seen you from the beginning as I behold you now, and could not help secretly laughing at your foolish anguish, because you did not believe yourself formed to awaken love. You, whose looks and words and gestures have haunted me day and night, inflamed my blood as no woman ever had power to do! You, who hate me, believe you hate me--for this horror is only the mother of longing--have poisoned my dreams with cruel tortures and made my waking hours miserable. If you knew all that from childish pride I have concealed from you--fool that I am, only to writhe the more helplessly at your feet waiting for mercy or sentence! And the omnipotent one knows that but one thought, one voice in my heart gave me courage to endure all this: the thought that the hour would come when you would suddenly melt, and swept away by the same storm, say to me: 'You have suffered enough, take me. Let us perish to live again in each other!'" He had bent nearer and nearer to her, his lips almost touched her hair, his gaze rested on her brow, which was damp as if from mortal agony, and she had closed her eyes as if fainting. As she still remained motionless, a sudden terror seized upon him. "Christiane!" he cried, clasping her impetuously in his arms and seeking her lips with his. But at this moment he was violently thrust back. She had sprung from her chair and retreated a step. In the dim light of the lamp he saw her eyes wide open and fixed with an indescribable expression upon vacancy.
"You're a fiend!" she exclaimed. "Leave me instantly! if you have the Satanic courage to utter another word, I will throw the window open and rouse the quiet night with shrieks of murder. Do you hear what I say? If your own honor is not as indifferent to you as mine, go--go--GO!"
She uttered the last word in so loud a tone, and waved her hand so imperiously toward the door, that he remained silent. Yet he did not seem to be deeply agitated; nay even a smile hovered around his lips as he took his hat and overcoat from the sofa, bowed carelessly, and with a "good night" left the room. She heard him open the door that led into the entry and slam it violently after him, but could not distinguish his steps on the stairs. She was aware of his noiseless tread, however, and so at last believed herself alone. But the solitude only enabled her to collect her thoughts, and they made her still more wretched. She sank back into her chair, and the grief and anguish so painfully repressed found vent in passionate tears.
What had she been forced to hear! Although indignant at the art with which the gloomy fanatic blended the highest with the basest things, the divinest impulses with the maddest desires, striving with subtle boldness to lull to sleep the pure voice of the soul: was it not passion, she asked herself, that blazed within him, the language of unbridled love, which risks all to attain its object, and summons hell as well as heaven to its aid? Then she was not too repulsive to kindle such a fire, there was one man who would dare all for her, whom neither her hatred nor abhorrence could restrain from persecuting her with his ardent longings! From the chill in which she had shivered during her long walk through the misty night, into what a fiery gulf was she now hurled! or no, not yet into the blazing abyss, but the flames that rose from it were near enough to make her gasp for breath. She could not sit still in her chair, the air was so oppressively sultry; she opened the window, but instantly closed it again, as the fog, cold and damp as the atmosphere of a tomb, floated into the room making her shiver. Long before this the little fire in the stove had gone out, now the lamp failed also. She was in darkness, but she did not heed it. Pacing to and fro, absorbed in a chaos of thoughts, she mechanically loosened one article of clothing after another, letting each lie, where it fell. While thus groping about, she found herself beside her bed and sank down upon it. "To sleep!" she said aloud, and started at the sound of her own voice, then hastily cowered under the quilt as if for concealment. But she could not close her eyes; they burned too painfully after the long walk through the foggy night. She could not banish from her thoughts the eyes of the dangerous man she had just driven away; nothing availed her; they flashed upon her everywhere, even from the darkness and through her closed lids. In her terror she tried to banish the spectre by a spell which had never yet failed her, by conjuring up Edwin's form before her mind. Now even this was useless: with all her efforts, she could not recall the features that were usually so distinct; but Toinette's lovely face suddenly came uppermost in her mind, so bright and smiling that she felt a sharp pang, and drew the coverlid over her eyes to shut out the memory. The next instant she again threw it back, raised her head from the pillow and sat up, as if suffocating. A weary moan escaped her lips, she threw her bare arm over her face and buried her teeth in her own flesh until the keen agony recalled her to consciousness.
"He was right," she said to herself, "there is but one magic, the magic of sin. A God now, to whom one could pray: Deliver us from evil--but a God, who must first be implored--!"
She sat erect bewildered with anguish, her heart throbbing stormily; then gradually she sank back, into a recumbent posture, and at last fell into a half slumber. The night seemed yet more silent, the world seemed dead, and only she with her unappeased longing for happiness, could not perish. Suddenly she fancied that she heard a strange crackling sound, as if a bat were fluttering over the floor. A shudder ran through her frame; she could not move, her limbs seemed paralyzed by approaching death.
"Who is there?" she cried. No answer.
"Is there any one in the room?" All was still as death.