"I have been sacrificed to him once already," he says, fiercely; "am I to be sacrificed a second time to a sentimental recollection of him—to the mere memory of his perfections?"
She raises her rejected hand and its fellow deprecatingly towards him. "Don't be angry with me," she cries, pleadingly; "this has nothing to say to him; the reason why I will not marry you is that I am a mésalliance for you."
"That is my concern, I imagine," he answers, stiffly.
"I think not," she rejoins, gently. "You have lost your senses, as you told me just now; you are mad, and I am sane; therefore I can judge better than you yourself what is for your good: some day you will agree with me."
"Never!" he replies, emphatically; and with that, she standing nigh, and the temptation being mighty, he flings his arms sans cérémonie about her supple body, and strains her to his breast.
Outside, the rain streams down with a continuous quiet noise; the dappled deer are herding their branchy heads together under the old leafless hornbeams for shelter. For one moment Esther lies passive in her lover's arms, yielding to the bliss of that rough embrace; and, after all, among the blisses that we wot of, what is there so great as,
"After long grief and pain,
To feel the arms of your true love
Round you once again?"
Then her recollected resolution comes back. "Let me go," she says, faintly; "this is not right!"
"Right or wrong," he answers, doggedly, "it is the one moment worth being called 'life' that I have spent since I was fool enough to cut my own throat by parting from you."
"Let me go!" she says, again; and he, holding her still prisoner, but putting her a little farther from him, that he may the more distinctly see the workings of her countenance, says steadily: