‘Yes, Ambrose,’ she answered in the same low, far-away, despairing voice. ‘That is why I came—to comfort you if I could. Look up! speak to me! I can bear everything if I can only be still certain of your love.’
He uncovered his face, and gazed at her in astonishment.
‘What! can you forgive me?’
‘I have nothing to forgive,’ she replied mournfully. ‘Can you think that my esteem for you is so slight a thing, so light a straw, that even this cruel wind of evil fortune can blow it away? I know that you have been honourable in word and deed; I know that you are the noblest and the best of men. It is no fault of yours, dear, if God is so hard upon us; no, no, you are not to blame.’
‘But you do not understand! I am a broken man. I must leave this place, and——-’
‘Listen to me,’ she said, interrupting him with that air of gentle mastery which had ever exercised so great a spell upon him, and which gave to her passionate beauty a certain splendour of command. ‘Do you think you are quite just to me when you speak—as you have spoken—of leaving Fensea, and bidding me an eternal farewell? Since this trouble in the church, you have acted as if I had no part and parcel in your life, save that which might come if we were merely married people; you have thought of me as of a woman to whom you were betrothed, not as of a loving friend whom you might trust till death. Do you think that my faith in you is so slight a thing that it cannot survive even the loss of you as a lover, if that must be? Do you not know that I am all yours, to the deepest fibre of my being, that your sorrow is my sorrow, your God my God—even as I said? I am your sister still, even if I am not to be your wife, and whither you go, be sure I shall follow.’
He listened to her in wonder; for in proportion as he was troubled, she was strangely calm, and her voice had a holy fervour before which he bent in reverent humiliation. When she ceased, with her soft hand still upon his shoulder, he raised his eyes to her, and they were dim with tears.
‘You are too good!’ he said. ‘I am the dust beneath your feet.’
‘You are my hero and my master. As Heloise was to Abelard, so would I be to you. So why should you grieve? I shall be to you as before, a loving friend, perhaps a comforter, till death separates us in this world, to meet in a better and a fairer.’
He took her hands in his own, and kissed them, his tears still falling.