"I am the wife of another!"
I started from my seat, and, in a paroxysm of frenzy, paced up and down before her. I did not exclaim aloud, "You have deceived me!" but my flashing eyes and flushed brow expressed it more eloquently than language. She bore this in silence for a few minutes, and then addressed me again,
"I said I would try not to blame you. I blame only myself. Like all men, you are strong in protestations, and feeble, timid, and vacillating in action. You are thinking now of the world, which only last night you so courageously despised. A few hours ago, you believed yourself so superior to the common weaknesses of your sex, that you were ready to make the most heroic sacrifices. What has become of that vehement resolution, that brave self-reliance? Vanished on the instant you are put to the proof. Believe me, you have miscalculated your own nature—all men do in such cases. A woman whose heart is her life, and who shrinks in terror from all other conflicts, is alone equal to such a struggle as this. The world is your proper sphere; do not deceive yourself. You could not sustain isolation; you would be forever looking back, as you are at this moment, for the consolations and support you had abandoned."
"No, Astræa!" I exclaimed; "you wrong me. My resolution is unchanged; but you must allow something for the suddenness—the shock—"
"I give you credit," she resumed, "for the best intentions. It is not your fault that habit and a constitutional acquiescence in it have left you no power over your will in great emergencies. You are what the world has made you; and you should be thankful that you have found it out in time. For me, what does it matter? By coming here, I have violated obligations for which society will hold me accountable, though they pressed like prison-bars upon me, lacerating and corroding my soul. It will admit no excuse for their abandonment in the unutterable misery they entailed. I am as guilty by this one step as if I had plunged into the depths of crime. The world does not recognize the doctrine that the real crime is in the admission of the first disloyal thought; it only looks to appearances which I have outraged. I have compromised myself beyond redemption. I can not retrieve my disgrace, though I am as pure in act as if we had never met. But I have done it upon my own responsibility, and upon me alone let the penalty fall. From this hour I release you."
Her language, and the dignity of her manner, stung me. She seemed to tower above me in the strength of her will, and the firmness with which she went through a scene that shattered my nerves fearfully, and made me equally irresolute of speech and purpose. While I was harrowed by an agony that fluttered in every pulse, she was perfectly calm and collected, and, rising quietly from her seat, turned away to leave me.
This action roused me from the stupor of indecision. The situation in which she was placed—making so new a demand upon my feelings—gave me a sort of advantage which I thought might enable me to recover the ground I had lost. By the exercise of magnanimity in such circumstances, I should vindicate myself in her estimation, and prove myself once more worthy of the opinion she had originally formed of me. It was something nobler, I thought, to embrace ruin at this moment for her sake, than if I had known it all along, and had come to that conclusion by a deliberate process of reasoning. This train of subtle sophistry, which has taken up some space to detail, struck me like a flash of light on the instant I thought I was about to lose her. I could bear all things but that, and could suffer all things to avert it. And so again I became her suitor, in a kind of proud generosity, that flattered itself by stooping to gain its own ends. How mean and selfish the human heart is when our desires are set in opposition to our duties!
I sprang forward, and clasped her eagerly by the hands. I flung myself on my knees before her. Tears leaped into my eyes. I told her that I had wronged her—that we had wronged each other—that I had never wavered in my faith—that we were bound to each other—and that we could commit no crime now except that of doubting, at either side, the truth of the love which had brought us there, and for which I, like her, had relinquished the world forever.
She had a woman's heart, full of tenderness and pity; and it is the tendency of woman's nature to forgive and believe where the affections are interested, without exacting much proof or penalty. She bent over me, and raised me in her arms. The storm had passed away, and she trusted in me implicitly again.
Her history? What was it? We shall come to it presently.