I don't know whether I was prepared for it or not: I knew that something terrible and final was to come, and I felt the awe that attends the thoughts that words are final and time limited. But when I heard the fatal truth--that another woman lived to whom he was irrevocably bound--I heard it as in a dream, and did not move or speak. I think I felt for a moment as if I were dead, as if I had passed out of the ranks of the living into the abodes of the silent, and benumbed, and pulseless. There was such a horrible awe, and chill, and check through all my young and rapid blood. It was like death by freezing. It is not so pleasant as they say, believe me. But no pain: that came afterward, when I came to life, when I felt the touch of his hand on mine, and ceased to hear his cruel words.
I had shrunk back from him in my chair, and sat, I suppose, like a person in a trance, with my hands in my lap, and my eyes fixed on him with bewilderment. But when he ceased to speak--and, leaning forward on one knee, clasped my hands in his, and drew me toward him, then indeed I knew I was not dead. Oh, the agony of those few moments--I tried to rise, to go away from him. But he held me with such strength--all his weakness was gone now. He folded his arms around my waist and held me as in a vise. Then suddenly leaning his head down upon my arms, he kissed my hands, my arms, my dress, with a moan of bitter anguish.
"Not mine," he murmured. "Never mine but in my dreams. O wretched dreams, that drive me mad. Pauline, they will tell us that we must not dream--we must not weep, we must be stocks and stones. We must wear this weight of living death till that good Lord that makes such laws shall send us death in mercy. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years of suffering: that might almost satisfy Him, one would think. Pauline! you and I are to say good-bye to-night. Good-bye! People talk of it as a cruel word. Think of it: if it were but for a year, a year with hope at the end of it to keep our hearts alive, it would be terrible, and we should need be brave. The tears that lovers shed over a year apart; the days that have got to come and go, how weary. The nights--the nights that sleep flies off from, and that memory reigns over. Count them--over three hundred come in every year. One, you think while it is passing, is enough to kill you: one such night of restless torture, and how many shall we multiply our three hundred by? We are young, Pauline. You are a child, a very child. I am in the very flush and strength of manhood. There is half a century of suffering in me yet: this frame, this brain, will stand the wear of the hard years to come but too, too well. There is no hope of death. There is no hope in life. That star has set. Good God! And that makes hell--why should I wait for it--it cannot be worse there than here. Don't listen to me--it will not be as hard for you--you are so young--you have no sins to torture you--only a little love to conquer and forget. You will marry a man who lives for you, and who is patient and will wait till this is over. Ah, no: by Heaven! I can't quite stand it yet. Pauline, you never loved him, did you--never blushed for him--never listened for his coming with your lips apart and your heart fluttering, as I have seen you listen when you thought that I was coming? No, I know you never loved him: I know you have loved me alone--me--who ought to have forbidden you. Forgive--forgive--forgive me."