"I charge you," she said, "to leave him, and go into the house. He will not dare to follow me!"
"I will dare the depths of perdition, and follow you wherever you go. See how he shrinks from me!—this champion and bully, for whom you stand condemned and branded before the world!"
"Bully!" I cried, "if you were not the feeble, wretched thing you are, I would strike you to the earth. It is you, not I, that have worked out this shame for your own fiendish ends. Did you not tell me that you helped and encouraged our intercourse—that you saw feelings growing up, and used all your arts to heighten them into an attachment which you knew would bring misery upon us all? For what purpose, devil as you are, did you do this?"
"To break her heart—for she had broken mine!"
"Be content, then, with what you have done, and leave us. You have placed me in a position which no fear of consequences can induce me to abandon. I will protect her to the last. Look upon us henceforth as inseparable, and rid us of your presence, lest I lose all self-command."
Grasping Astræa's hand, and controlling myself by a violent effort, I turned from him to lead her toward the house.
Perhaps it was this action which suddenly infuriated the demon, who now looked more horrible in the contortions of his unbridled rage than ever; and as I turned I felt, rather than saw, that he had coiled himself up to spring upon me. Relieving myself from her, I instantly faced him. His motions were as quick as light. One hand was upon my chest, and the other was fumbling under his cloak. Suspecting his intention, I seized his right arm and dragged it out. There was a pistol in his hand. It was not a time to exercise much forbearance in consideration of his physical inferiority, and by desperate force I wrenched the pistol from his grasp, and, tossing it over his head, flung it into the river. In the struggle, however, it had gone off, and, by the cry of pain he uttered, I concluded that he was wounded. But I was too much heated to think of that; and, in the fierceness of the conflict between us, I lifted him up by main strength, and flung him upon the ground.
Leaving him there, I hastened to Astræa, and we both went into the house, taking care to lock and bar the door, so that he could not follow us. The windows of the sitting-room went down close to the gravel-walk outside, upon which they opened. These were already secured, and we were safe.
As we sat there, half an hour afterward, a low, piteous voice came wailing through the shutters, uttering one word, which it repeated at intervals, in a tone that pierced me to the soul. "Astræa! Astræa! Astræa!" It was a voice so freighted with sorrow, that, had not evil passions intervened to shut our hearts to its petition, we must have relented and shown mercy to him out of whose despair it issued. But we held our breaths, hardly daring to look in each other's faces, and moved not!
God! all the long night that wailing voice seemed repeating, in fainter tones, "Astræa! Astræa! Astræa!" and she to whom it was addressed, and to whom it appealed in vain—let me not recall the memory! Many years have since trampled out other recollections, but that voice still seems to vibrate on my heart, and the name still surges up as I heard it then, sobbing through tears of mortal agony!