"I should not wish to be so, even if I could. There's no one on earth, since I lost my brother, who is so well acquainted with my every thought, every emotion of my heart. She's really my other self, my better self, far gentler, stronger, and more self-sacrificing than I, and I can never think of what I owe her during these years, without wondering at my own levity, that I do not feel oppressed by these debts, nay that I often imagine I can repay them daily with interest. If you knew this loving, lovely creature--"
"Spare me the embarrassment of knowing her now through your description. I will go, I see I have too long--"
"No, not so, you must not go so! You must hear me out, Toinette. This will perhaps be the last conversation we shall ever hold. Shall we make the wound this parting will cause still more painful by petty irritation? What I've told you is literally true. But if I love this woman as my better self, I feel for the first time at this moment--no, since early this morning--that no matter how we may estimate self-love, it cannot become a passion, an intoxication, a rapture of mingled happiness and misery. Oh! passion! which you call the claim of nature; I call it fate! It will be long ere the tempest will be laid which your kiss has roused in my soul. Now do you see that you have no reason to be ashamed of that caress? Nature has asserted its claim, fate has had its way; that's nothing of which mortals need be ashamed. But now the will must assert its power, we must open our eyes and question whither blind passion will lead us--say 'Halt!' to its further progress, and do our duty, no matter what it costs us. Don't you think so too my brave friend?"
He waited for her assent, for a glance which would tell him that she agreed with him. But she was looking steadily at her clasped hands, which rested quietly on her lap, and only after a long pause said as if to herself:
"The game's unequal. However--va banque!"
"What do you mean, Toinette?" he replied. "Do you wish to imply, that I shall return to what has hitherto formed my happiness, and find it as before, and that you will remain on the verge of the abyss? But now answer me one question--should I offer you my hand on the spot with the intention even at the price of my self-respect to lead you out of this house of gilded misery, do you believe that a man who had sacrificed for you his most sacred possessions, his duty, the proud consciousness of self-respect, the faith he had sworn to his better self in the person of a high hearted woman--"
"Hush!" she hastily interrupted. "It's needless to say more. Your admirably wise words torture me. Your talk of passion is but a form of words. You reason, you moralize, you think of a future in which you may repent of what you've done for me. But I, Oh! God--I've nothing but this hour, no consciousness of what may come, or of what has been! You're here with me, and the world beyond, all others beside ourselves, everything which you call sin and fate and duty and remorse--I know not. I am conscious only of this: that you're the only man on whose breast my restless heart has tasted the bliss of one moment's repose--never, never to taste it again, and he stands and philosophizes, while I--am dying!"
Her eyes, which became gloomily fixed upon vacancy, suddenly overflowed with tears, she convulsively pressed her hands to her face and burst into uncontrollable sobs.
"Toinette!" he exclaimed, "by all the saints, you wrong me. I--if you suspected what a superhuman battle I am fighting, what torture that moment in which you tasted repose has conjured up for me--Toinette, be merciful--spare me--let us help each other, instead of aiding each other to be wretched. No one else will help us. We have no belief in the eternal torments of hell, in an avenging God, or a redeeming Saviour. But we know what is right, Toinette, we know that all the bliss of love's greatest rapture would become a poison, if bought with the heart's blood of others whom we were compelled to sacrifice. We look for no eternity, in which to atone for the sins of the present. We can only be honest and brave and good here upon earth, and we will be, my poor love, for you have an heroic soul, which can find its real happiness only in refusing to be bowed by any fate, and in conquering or dying in the conflict."
He paused, and bending over her laid his hand upon her head, as in the old days he had stroked Balder's curls. Suddenly she started, her tearful eyes wandered around the room in bewilderment, and she said hastily: "Do you hear nothing? Steps are approaching along the corridor. Who can it be? but no matter! What is to come, may come--"