Artegui listened with mingled joy and pity.
“So that you who are so good, for if you were not good I should not have cared for you in this way, will let me go now. Or if you do not, I shall go without your leave, even if I should have to jump out of the window.”
“Unhappy woman!” he murmured gloomily, relapsing into his former state of dejection, “you have stumbled across happiness--that is to say, not happiness, but at least its shadow, but a shadow so beautiful----”
He rose to his feet suddenly, shaking himself and writhing like a lion in his death agony.
“Give me a reason!” he cried, “or I shall kill myself at your feet. Let me at least know why you refuse. Is it for your father’s sake? your husband’s? your child’s? the world’s? Is it----”
“It is,” she murmured, bending her head, and speaking with great sweetness, “it is for the sake of God.”
“God!” groaned the skeptic. “And if there be no----”
“Can you still doubt his existence when to-day, by a miracle--you yourself have said it--by a miracle--he preserved your life?”
“But your God is angry with you,” he objected. “You offended him by loving me; you offend him by continuing to love me; by coming here you have offended him still more deeply----”
“Though I stood on the brink of perdition, though I were sinking in the flames of hell--my God is ready to save and to pardon me if my will be turned to Him. Now, now I will ask Him to save me.”
“And He will not save you,” replied Artegui, taking both her hands in his; “He will not save you; for wherever you may go, though you should hide yourself from me in the very center of the earth, though you should take refuge in the cell of a convent, you will still adore me, you will offend Him by thinking of me. No, the sincerity of your nature will not permit you to deny it. Ah! if one could only love or not love at will! But your conscience tells you plainly that, do what you may, I shall always be in your thoughts--always. And for the very reason that it horrifies you that this should be so, so it will be. And more--the day will come when, like to-day, you will desire to see me, although it be but for a moment, and overcoming all the obstacles that lie in your way, and breaking down the barriers that oppose themselves to your will, you will come to me--to me.”
