“Oh no, no, no!” cried the priest, springing to his feet with a kind of moan, and a shudder, “God forbid!” He swiftly touched her hand with the tips of his fingers, and then kissed them: an action of inexpressible humility. “Madamigella, I swear to you by everything you believe good that I would rather die than be false to you in a single breath or thought.”
“Oh, I know it, I know it,” she murmured. “I don’t see how I could say such a cruel thing.”
“Not cruel; no, madamigella, not cruel,” softly pleaded Don Ippolito.
“But—but is there no escape for you?”
They looked steadfastly at each other for a moment, and then Don Ippolito spoke.
“Yes,” he said very gravely, “there is one way of escape. I have often thought of it, and once I thought I had taken the first step towards it; but it is beset with many great obstacles, and to be a priest makes one timid and insecure.”
He lapsed into his musing melancholy with the last words; but she would not suffer him to lose whatever heart he had begun to speak with. “That’s nothing,” she said, “you must think again of that way of escape, and never turn from it till you have tried it. Only take the first step and you can go on. Friends will rise up everywhere, and make it easy for you. Come,” she implored him fervently, “you must promise.”
He bent his dreamy eyes upon her.
“If I should take this only way of escape, and it seemed desperate to all others, would you still be my friend?”
“I should be your friend if the whole world turned against you.”