A dark frown of anger overclouded her brow. But she restrained herself, and said, holding on to the door-knob: “In what way have I deserved to be made sport of? Make the promise without condition. I expect it on your honor, Signor!”
“Will you so thrust me aside, after you have instilled your love charm into me to the very core and made me your own forever, Fenice?”
She calmly shook her head. “There is no longer any charm between us,” she said in a hollow voice. “You lost blood before the drink worked; the spell is broken. And it is well that it is so, for I have done wrong. Do not let us speak of it any more and only say that you will go. A horse will be ready and a guide for wherever you will.”
“If it is no longer magic that binds me to you, there is surely something else, for which you have no remedy. May God be gracious to me—”
“Be still!” she interrupted him, and closed her lips tightly. “I am deaf to such words as you are going to speak. If you think there is something due to me and are trying to pity me—then go and the account is therewith balanced. You shall not think that this poor head of mine can learn nothing. I know now that one can not buy a human being—as little by the pitiable services that go as a matter of course, as by seven years of waiting—which is also a matter of course, before God. You shall not think that you have made me unhappy. You have cured me! Go, and take my thanks with you!”
“Answer me, before God!” he cried, beside himself, and went nearer to her, “have I cured you also of your love?”
“No,” she said firmly. “What is that to you? That is my affair; you have neither right nor power over it. Go.”
With that she stepped back and over the threshold. The next moment he had fallen on the stones at her feet and was clasping her knees.
“If it is true, what you say,” he cried in greatest sorrow, “then save me, receive me, take me up to you, or this brain, which only a miracle has kept together, will burst in pieces, along with the heart that you wish to thrust aside. My world is empty, my love the prey of hate, my old and my new home banished me; what have I to live for, if I must also lose you!”
Then he looked up at her and saw the bright tears breaking from her closed eyes. Her face was still motionless; then she took a deep breath, her eyes opened, her lips moved, still without words. At one touch life was again blossoming in her. She bent down over him, her strong arms lifted him up—“You are mine!” she whispered trembling. “So will I be yours.”