Donatus clasped his hands, and a cold sweat stood on his brow; Beata flung herself before him.
"My lord and master, do not drive me away; you cannot be so cruel, you only fancy that you can, and you will rue it when you are gone a few hundred yards, and you will call your child to come back to you; but it will be too late. I have been with you in the hour of anguish, my eyes are dim with watching by your bed, my bleeding feet have stained the stones on the paths along which I have led you, and you will drive me away? Oh, dear good master! you would not drive away a lost dog that humbly licked your hand, and have you no pity on my suffering and my tears?" And she laid her tear-bathed face on his hands and tremblingly clasped his knees.
The tortured man cried out from the depths of his soul, "Oh God, my God! is it not enough? Beata, have pity, have pity, no devil could torture me as you are doing. Beata, if you are not indeed of the powers of hell, if you are not an emissary of the devil sent to torment me, go from me. Oh holy Spirit! enlighten her, purify her, deliver her, as Thou hast delivered me."
He rose and solemnly lifted his hand, "Beata would you win everlasting bliss?"
"I ask for no bliss without you," said the girl.
"Beata, do you wish me to lose it too?"
The child shuddered but did not speak.
"Beata if you renounce me I may yet be saved. But if you will not quit me, if you make me faithless to my vows, I must be eternally damned. Now choose, which is it to be?"
The girl answered in a tremulous and hardly audible voice, "I will--go."
All was silent, as when the last life struggle is past, and the bystanders whisper, "All is over!"