`If you affect,' replied he earnestly, `to regard as folly, the best, the strongest, the most godlike impulses of our nature,--I don't believe you --I know you are not the heartless, icy being you pretend to bayou had a heart once, and you gave it to your husband. When you found him utterly unworthy of the treasure you reclaimed it;--and you will not pretend that you loved that sensual, earthly minded profligate so deeply, so devotedly that you can never love another?--I know that there are feelings in your nature that have never yet been called forth--I know, too, that in your present neglected, lonely state you are, and must be miserable. You have it in your power to raise two human beings from a state of actual suffering to such unspeakable beatitude as only generous, noble self-forgetting love can give (for you can love me if you will; you may tell me that you scorn and detest me, but--since you have set me the example of plain speaking--I will answer that I do not believe you!), but you will not do it! you choose rather to leave us miserable; and you coolly tell me it is the will of God that we should remain so. You may call this religion, but I call it wild fanaticism!'
`There is another life both for you and for me,' said I. `If it be the will of--God that we should sow in tears, now, it is only that we may reap in joy, hereafter.* It is His will that we should not injure others by the gratification of our own earthly passions; and you have a mother, and sisters, and friends, who would be seriously injured by your disgrace; and I too have friends, whose peace of mind shall never be sacrificed to my enjoyment--or yours either, with my consent--and if I were alone in the world, I have still my God and my religion,* and I would sooner die than disgrace my calling and break my faith with Heaven to obtain a few brief years of false and fleeting happiness--happiness sure to end in misery, even here--for myself or any other!'
`There need be no disgrace--no misery or sacrifice in any quarter,' persisted he. `I do not ask you to leave your home or defy the world's opinion. `--But I need not repeat all his arguments. I refuted them to the best of my power; but that power was provokingly small, at the moment, for I was too much flurried with indignation--and even shame--that he should thus dare to address me, to retain sufficient command of thought and language to enable me adequately to contend against his powerful sophistries. Finding, however, that he could not be silenced by reason, and even covertly exulted in his seeming advantage, and ventured to deride those assertions I had not the coolness to prove, I changed my course and tried another plan.
`Do you really love me?' said I seriously, pausing and looking him calmly in the face.
`Do I love you!' cried he.
`Truly?' I demanded.
His countenance brightened; he thought his triumph was at hand.
He commenced a passionate protestation of the truth and fervour of his attachment which I cut short by another question:--`But is it not a selfish love?--have you enough disinterested affection to enable you to sacrifice your own pleasure to mine?'
`I would give my life to serve you.'
`I don't want your life--but have you enough real sympathy for my afflictions to induce you to make an effort to relieve them, at the risk of a little discomfort to yourself?'
`Try me, and see!'
`If you have-- never mention this subject again . You cannot recur to it in any way, without doubling the weight of those sufferings you so feelingly deplore. I have nothing left me but the solace of a good conscience and a hopeful trust in Heaven, and you labour continually to rob me of these. If you persist, I must regard you as my deadliest foe.'
`But hear me a moment--'
`No, sir! you said you would give your life to serve me: I only ask your silence on one particular point. I have spoken plainly; and what I say I mean. If you torment me in this way any more, I must conclude that your protestations are entirely false, and that you hate me in your heart as fervently as you profess to love me!'
He bit his lip and bent his eyes upon the ground in silence for a while.
`Then I must leave you,' said he at length, looking steadily upon me, as if with the last hope of detecting some token of irrepressible anguish or dismay awakened by those solemn words. `I must leave you. I cannot live here, and be for ever silent on the all-absorbing subject of my thoughts and wishes.'
`Formerly, I believe, you spent but little of your time at home,'
I answered: `it will do you no harm to absent yourself again, for a while--if that be really necessary.'
`If that be really possible,' he muttered--'and can you bid me go so coolly? Do you really wish it?'
`Most certainly I do. If you cannot see me without tormenting me as you have lately done, I would gladly say farewell and never see you more.
He made no answer, but, bending from his horse, held out his hand towards me. I looked up at his face, and saw, therein, such a look of genuine agony of soul that, whether bitter disappointment, or wounded pride, or lingering love, or burning wrath were uppermost, I could not hesitate to put my hand in his as frankly as if I bade a friend farewell. He grasped it very hard, and immediately put spurs to his horse and galloped away.
Very soon after, I learned that he was gone to Paris, where he still is, and the longer he stays there the better for me.
I thank God for this deliverance!
[END OF VOL. II.]