She rose.
"We shall see you yet before you go?"
"Natalie," he said, in despair, "I had come to try to say good-bye to you; but I cannot, my darling, I cannot! I must see you again."
"I do not understand why you should wish to see again one like me," she said, slowly, and the voice did not sound like her own voice. "I have given you over to death: and, more than that, to a death that is not honorable; and, yet I cannot even tell you that I am grieved. But there is pain here." She put her hand over her heart; she staggered back a little bit; he caught her.
"Natalie—Natalie!"
"It is a pain that kills," she said, wildly.
"Natalie, where is your courage? I give my life without question; you must bear your part too."
She still held her hand over her bosom.
"Yet," she said, as if she had not heard him, "that is what they say; it kills, this pain in the heart. Why not—if one does not wish to live?"
At this moment the door was opened, and the mother came into the room.