"Will you not accept my own authority, without seeking further?"
"No. It is not a time to hold back from any false delicacy to me, or any mistaken respect for the confidence of others. Beware of such confidences, if there be any. They are not meant for your peace or mine, but to plunge us both into an abyss in which we shall be left to perish. I must know all. I am entitled to know it. If your love be a hundredth part as strong and devoted, and as prepared for sacrifice as mine, you will place a full and entire trust in me."
"And I do. You shall know all; but I must exact a solemn promise from you, before I tell you how, and in what manner, this information was communicated to me. It is impossible for me to foresee how it may affect or wound your feelings; and it is due to me, if I yield to your request against my own judgment, that you should pledge yourself, be the consequences what they may, to give me a public right to protect you against the further malignity—I can not call it by any milder term—of your enemies and mine."
She was deeply affected by this request, which was spoken in so low and tremulous a voice, so burdened with a painful earnestness, that she appeared to gather from it the final conviction that upon her answer depended the future happiness or misery of our lives. I confess, for my own part, that the pause which ensued, during which she almost unconsciously repeated to herself, "Be the consequences what they may!" was to me harrowing beyond expression. It seemed as if there was some sinister influence at work to destroy us both; and that even the immediate prospect of our union was not sufficient to allay the terror that influence inspired, and into the causes and springs of which I now began to imagine she had a clearer insight than I had previously suspected. But I was steeped in a tumultuous passion, which would not suffer me to investigate intervening difficulties. What the source of her terror was I knew not; mine arose only from the apprehension of losing her; and to have secured her at that moment, looking as she did, in the agitation that gave such a wild lustre to her eyes, more lovely than ever, I would have cheerfully relinquished every thing else in the world. So far from being anxious to have the cause of her fears and hesitation cleared up, I was in the utmost alarm lest she should enter upon an explanation that might delay the consummation of my wishes. I sought only an affirmative reply to my request, which, come what might, would make her mine forever.
She loosened herself from my arm, and walked apart from me in silence. This action, and the sort of panic it indicated, filled me with alarm.
"Astræa, you have not answered my question. What is the reason of your silence?"
"Be the consequences what they may!" she reiterated. "I did not think of that, but it is right I should. I should have thought of it before—I did think of it; but of what avail, while I suffered myself to indulge in a dream which that thought ought to have dispelled?"
"You speak in a language that is unintelligible to me; but there is no time now for explanations. We must decide, Astræa, at once, for to-day and forever. I only ask your explicit pledge. Let us reserve explanations for hereafter."
"You say this in ignorance of what awaits you. I feel that I ought not to make any pledge until—" and she hesitated again.
"If I am satisfied to take your pledge, and all consequences with it, and to repay it with the devotion of my life, why, beloved Astræa, should you hesitate? Let the responsibility fall on me—of that another time. Every hour is precious now, and you will understand why I urge you so impatiently when I tell you that I can never again enter the house where you are now residing."