"Darling," I said, taking her soft left hand within both my own, "I cannot tell exactly what you wish to tell me; but listen—I had finished all, and had things not turned out as they have I should have been starting now to come to you and say, 'Lucia I am free now to be your slave.' All this year we have been separated I have thought only of you, waking and sleeping, longed for you, dreamed of you, lived in the hour of our re-union, desired with an intensity beyond all words that day that gives you to me; and, forty hours back, that day, Lucia, seemed so near, but now—dearest"—
I stopped, choked, suffocated with the weight of hopeless, despairing passion that fell back upon itself within me.
Lucia leant forward, the beating, palpitating bosom was close to me, her white, nerveless hand lay close in mine.
"And now, Victor?"
"Now all is vanished. I am exactly in the position where I was when I left you in England a year ago."
"And what do you mean—what are we—what?"—
"My sweet, what can we do? I must recommence. I must work on another year."
I felt the burning, tremulous fingers grow cold in mine. Her face paled till it was like white stone. Then suddenly she withdrew her hand from my clasp, and started to her feet.
"Victor, I cannot! no, I cannot! I cannot wait another year! It will kill me!" she said, passionately, looking away from me, and pacing a short length of the floor backwards and forwards before me, as I rose, too, and stood watching dizzily the incomparable figure pass and repass, hardly master of myself.
"Dearest," she continued; "this is what I came to say—let us marry now. I thought you would have successfully finished your work, and we might do so; but now, now, even as it is, let it be as it is, let it be unfinished, and still, still let us marry. There is no real bar as there might be. There is no question of wrong to any one. We are to be married—it cannot matter to any one when we are. Continue to work afterwards. I am willing to be second always, in every thing, to your work. But don't drive me from you altogether. Let me stay with you now I have come. Let us marry now—here. Let us go before some official—the Maire, or some one, or English consul, no matter whom—this afternoon! Victor, if not now, that day you desire will never come. I shall never be your own. Think how it has receded and receded into time! We have been engaged now more than three years!"