“That if we remain friends it can result in nothing but evil.”
I was puzzled. She spoke so strangely, and I, sitting there fascinated by her marvellous beauty, gazed full at her in silence.
“You speak in enigmas,” I exclaimed.
“You have only to choose for yourself.”
“Your words are those of one who fears some terrible catastrophe,” I said. “I don’t really understand.”
“Ah! you cannot. It’s impossible!” she answered in a low, hollow voice, all life having left her face. She was sitting in the armchair, leaning forward slightly, with her face still beautiful, but white and haggard. “If I could explain, then you might find some means to escape, but I dare not tell you. Chance has thrown us together—an evil chance—and you admire me; you think perhaps that you could love me, you—”
“I do love you, Aline!” I burst forth with an impetuosity which was beyond my control, and springing to my feet I caught her hand and pressed it to my lips.
“Ah!” she sighed, allowing the hand to remain limp and inert in mine. “Yes, I dreaded this. I was convinced from your manner that my fascination had fallen upon you. No!” she cried, rising slowly and determinedly to her feet. “No! I tell you that you must not love me. Rather hate me—curse me for the evil I have already wrought—detest my name as that of one whose sin is unpardonable, whose contact is deadly, and at whose touch all that is good and honest and just withers and passes away. You do not know me, you cannot know me, or you would not kiss my hand,” she cried, with a strange glint in her eyes as she held forth her small, white palm. “You love me!” she added, panting, with a hoarse, harsh laugh. “Say rather that you hold me in eternal loathing.”
“All this puzzles me,” I cried, standing stone still. “You revile yourself, but if you have sinned surely there is atonement? Your past cannot have been so ugly as you would make me believe.”
“My past concerns none but myself,” she said quickly, as if indignant that I should have mentioned an unwelcome subject. “It is the future that I anticipate with dread, a future in which you appear determined to sacrifice yourself as victim.”