He had just sealed the note and was writing the address, when there was another knock at his door. "Come in!" he exclaimed indignantly, for the thought darted through his mind that the count might come to see him in person and thereby render useless the letter, which would have spared him any verbal explanations; then the door opened and Toinette entered.

"Is it you?" he exclaimed rushing toward her. "Do you come to me?"

She threw back the dark shawl she had wrapped around her, and he saw that she wore a simple dress and had laid aside all her jewelry.

"I could not help coming to you," she said in her usual tone. "I wanted to speak to you, and you--you're going away; I knew it, before seeing the letter upon your table. You would have gone without bidding me farewell. Would you not?"

"Perhaps it would have been the best course," he replied, clasping her hand, which hung loosely by her side. "Tell me yourself, my dear friend, have we ought to hope for, from any words we might exchange?

Fate does not turn for words. And yet I could hardly have made up my mind to leave without a word. I intended to have gone to the farm house on the other side of the forest, and from there to have sent you a note, to say I would wait to hear from you in case you had any commissions for me. But you have antic.i.p.ated me. Are we not in danger of interruption here?"

"What does it matter?" she replied with a gesture expressive of the most utter indifference, as she seated herself on the sofa. "You mean, will it not compromise me to make you a visit by night? Perhaps so. But that's unfortunately not sufficient cause for separation. Otherwise I should not have waited till I could visit a friend. The first person I chanced to meet would have suited my purpose, the chevalier, or our dear cousin Gaston, for instance, if I could break the chain so easily." Then glancing at the letter, she added: "What did you write to him?"

"Do you wish to read it? It's at your service."

"No; it makes no difference. You're going away--that says all--and I--I must stay here."

He looked at her as she uttered these words in an expressionless tone, as if only talking to herself. Her dilated eyes were fixed in a terrified gaze, on the candles burning in the silver candlesticks as if her life were fading and she was striving to rekindle the glimmering spark by these tiny flames. Her face was colorless, but inexpressibly attractive in its utter self-forgetfulness, which made the beautiful woman seem like a helpless child that, frightened by the dread of ghosts, files to some brilliantly lighted room and gazes straight at the lamp, that it may see no spectral faces to right or left.

"What really brings me here," she said after a pause, "is a question I wanted to ask you, but mind, I'm speaking to the philosopher, and not to the friend of former days."

"Of _former_ days?"

"Let me go on. I want to ask you whether there is any justice on earth.

Or no, you need not answer. It's perfectly evident that gifts are differently apportioned among men. That there is no justice, even in heaven--not even according to the representations of religious people--is also unquestionable, else what would become of the doctrine of election? 'Many are called, but few chosen.' For why did not the 'so-called G.o.ds,' of whom your friend spoke that day of long ago, endow all their creatures equally, if they had the power to be just?

Intentional partiality, voluntary malice--no, that would be too fiendish. But now tell me, why must we endure degradation, neglect, to better the condition of the children of happiness, yes, even expulsion into bad company--such as you've found beneath this roof? Is not self-defence in mortal peril allowable? To help ourselves I mean, when one is wretched, disinherited, starving perhaps, and full dishes are carried past him? Or do you think it a sin to break one of the ten commandments under any circ.u.mstances? What? Are the gifts, powers, and happiness of men to be different, and yet must they have but one rule for their actions? Is the fainting beggar who plucks an apple from a stranger's tree, as great a thief, as a man who has plenty to eat and breaks into a treasury? Answer! Why may we not philosophize a little as usual? You would find me a better pupil now, for I've gone through the primary school and learned all the absurdities of this great world by heart--yes indeed, by _heart_, and it ached enough at the task."

"Dearest friend," he replied, "if you knew how _my_ heart aches, aches till it's ready to burst, you would ask no philosophy from me. When I see and hear you, I have enough to do, not to give utterance to the fiercest cry of woe that ever burst from the lips of a thinking mortal.

What could I say to you--except the most pitiful commonplaces. You question me about the mystery of life. The clue to it, which one and another fancies he has found, is but a new enigma; and it is equally mysterious that there should be men who are forced to rack their brains about this mystery until their hearts break, while others have never a sleepless moment, but await the solution as patiently as the answer to a charade which is to appear 'in our next number.' Meantime it is ordered--or we must see to it ourselves--that life and its work, thoughtless everyday work, withdraws us from our agitating search for the solution to the riddle. Dear Toinette--"

"I know what you're going to say," she quickly interrupted. "My idleness is the cause of all my sorrows. If I had something to do, I should not have time to ponder four and twenty hours a day over what I most lack. Is not that what you were about to say? To establish a child's school or hospital, make clothes for deaf mutes, or in my old age strive to cultivate a talent for painting or playing on the piano--all I these would be delightful occupations! But I'm not affectionate enough for one, or vain enough for the other. I don't love human beings, my friend, I mean abstract human beings, mankind. And yet, I know now that my only talent would have been love; but the love I mean, is love for one man and that man's children, and because I learned this too late--I must go to ruin--to ruin.

"But no," she suddenly exclaimed, and a pa.s.sionate flush crimsoned her cheeks as she pushed the table aside and rose from the sofa. "I will not go to ruin, will not yield the right of self-defence and suffer my claim to happiness to be wrested from me, as it is from every disinherited soul. Words are of no avail against the decrees of fate, didn't you say so, Edwin? You're right, we must act, if we desire to win the respect of the 'so-called G.o.ds;' therefore I've come to you, my friend. Do not look at me so! You know what has brought me here, even if a wretched remnant of cowardice does not suffer me to express it. Be merciful, spare me, and tell me that you know all and will not thrust me from the only place where I can find happiness--your heart, Edwin!"

"Toinette!" he exclaimed--but he could say no more. She had thrown herself into his arms and hidden her streaming eyes, her glowing lips upon his breast.

"Calm yourself!" he ventured to murmur in her ear after a long pause, his lips touching her hair; suddenly she raised her head, and her face wore an expression of such blended happiness and anguish, that all his strength failed. "This is too much!" he faltered. "Spare me! You do not know what I have suffered!"

"I do know," she whispered amid her kisses. "I knew it in the first hour we were together--you're still mine, as you have ever been--you're mine, mine--as I've been your's, ever since I became a woman."

At this moment the clock in the old castle tower slowly struck twelve.

A shudder ran through the frame of the man who clasped to his heart the woman who had been the object of his first love. It seemed as if a cold spectral hand was pa.s.sing over his heart, quenching the fierce glow that threatened to destroy him. He released his lips from hers, and gently pushed away the slight figure that clung to his breast. "What have we done?" he exclaimed, retreating a step and averting his eyes.

"We have drunk when we were thirsty," said the impa.s.sioned woman, without lowering her glance. "Oh! it was but a drop on the hot stone!

Why do you no longer look into my eyes, Edwin? Are you ashamed that you still love me, because in the old days I was childish and cold, and knew not what I did? The curse was still upon me, the curse of my birth, for which I've had to atone through all these years of suffering, to become at last another creature, a happy creature, new born through your love, Edwin! When I first saw you, early this morning, my heart received a blow that burst the lid of the coffin in which it was buried; and in the forest, how your every word, your glance, the pressure of your hand said to me: 'what are four years to a feeling that's eternal? I'm the same man, whom once you made miserable, but now all will be well again, since my happiness is yours.' Look into my eyes, Edwin, and tell me, if you can, that I have deceived myself!"

She had approached him and taken his hand. He did not withdraw it, but the glance that met hers was now so sad that she shrank back and let it fall.

"You have seen aright, my poor friend," he said in a hollow tone. "I _am_ the same man, whom you made miserable. Yet nevertheless you have deceived yourself. What is now my happiness cannot be yours. Don't you know it? Have you entirely forgotten that I no longer belong to myself?

My life is bound to another, and this other is dearer, should be dearer to me than my own existence."

"I know it," she replied, as she approached the little table and quietly rested both hands upon it. "But if it's true that this woman, to whom in an outburst of pride and anger you gave your hand, really loves you, will she be able to endure the sorrow, when she sees that she alone stands in the way of your happiness? I, if placed in such a situation, would rather die than a.s.sert a light which I had obtained in an unguarded moment, and which had at last become a sin against the claim of nature."

He gravely shook his head. "Listen to me," he said. "Sit down there, my beloved friend, and let us honestly endeavor to find some way out of this labyrinth. It would be easier for you to understand me, if you knew the woman whose life is so firmly bound to mine that nothing can separate us, not even what you call the claim of nature. She knows all.

I've concealed nothing of what I suffered through you--"

"And you will be silent _now_?"

"I should not wish to be so, even if I could. There's no one on earth, since I lost my brother, who is so well acquainted with my every thought, every emotion of my heart. She's really my other self, my better self, far gentler, stronger, and more self-sacrificing than I, and I can never think of what I owe her during these years, without wondering at my own levity, that I do not feel oppressed by these debts, nay that I often imagine I can repay them daily with interest.

If you knew this loving, lovely creature--"

"Spare me the embarra.s.sment of knowing her now through your description. I will go, I see I have too long--"

"No, not so, you must not go so! You must hear me out, Toinette. This will perhaps be the last conversation we shall ever hold. Shall we make the wound this parting will cause still more painful by petty irritation? What I've told you is literally true. But if I love this woman as my better self, I feel for the first time at this moment--no, since early this morning--that no matter how we may estimate self-love, it cannot become a pa.s.sion, an intoxication, a rapture of mingled happiness and misery. Oh! pa.s.sion! which you call the claim of nature; I call it fate! It will be long ere the tempest will be laid which your kiss has roused in my soul. Now do you see that you have no reason to be ashamed of that caress? Nature has a.s.serted its claim, fate has had its way; that's nothing of which mortals need be ashamed. But now the will must a.s.sert its power, we must open our eyes and question whither blind pa.s.sion will lead us--say 'Halt!' to its further progress, and do our duty, no matter what it costs us. Don't you think so too my brave friend?"

He waited for her a.s.sent, for a glance which would tell him that she agreed with him. But she was looking steadily at her clasped hands, which rested quietly on her lap, and only after a long pause said as if to herself:

"The game's unequal. However--_va banque!_"

"What do you mean, Toinette?" he replied. "Do you wish to imply, that I shall return to what has. .h.i.therto formed my happiness, and find it as before, and that you will remain on the verge of the abyss? But now answer me one question--should I offer you my hand on the spot with the intention even at the price of my self-respect to lead you out of this house of gilded misery, do you believe that a man who had sacrificed for you his most sacred possessions, his duty, the proud consciousness of self-respect, the faith he had sworn to his better self in the person of a high hearted woman--"

"Hush!" she hastily interrupted. "It's needless to say more. Your admirably wise words torture me. Your talk of pa.s.sion is but a form of words. You reason, you moralize, you think of a future in which you may repent of what you've done for me. But I, Oh! G.o.d--I've nothing but this hour, no consciousness of what may come, or of what has been!

You're here with me, and the world beyond, all others beside ourselves, everything which you call sin and fate and duty and remorse--I know not. I am conscious only of this: that you're the only man on whose breast my restless heart has tasted the bliss of one moment's repose--never, never to taste it again, and he stands and philosophizes, while I--am dying!"

Her eyes, which became gloomily fixed upon vacancy, suddenly overflowed with tears, she convulsively pressed her hands to her face and burst into uncontrollable sobs.

"Toinette!" he exclaimed, "by all the saints, you wrong me. I--if you suspected what a superhuman battle I am fighting, what torture that moment in which you tasted repose has conjured up for me--Toinette, be merciful--spare me--let us help each other, instead of aiding each other to be wretched. No one else will help us. We have no belief in the eternal torments of h.e.l.l, in an avenging G.o.d, or a redeeming Saviour. But we know what is right, Toinette, we know that all the bliss of love's greatest rapture would become a poison, if bought with the heart's blood of others whom we were compelled to sacrifice. We look for no eternity, in which to atone for the sins of the present. We can only be honest and brave and good here upon earth, and we will be, my poor love, for you have an heroic soul, which can find its real happiness only in refusing to be bowed by any fate, and in conquering or dying in the conflict."

He paused, and bending over her laid his hand upon her head, as in the old days he had stroked Balder's curls. Suddenly she started, her tearful eyes wandered around the room in bewilderment, and she said hastily: "Do you hear nothing? Steps are approaching along the corridor. Who can it be? but no matter! What is to come, may come--"

There was a low knock at the door, then it was quickly but cautiously opened, though only wide enough to enable some person to speak. "The Herr Count is coming up the stairs," said a woman's voice. "I think he is on his way here."

"Very well, Rose," replied the countess, hastily wiping her eyes. "Come in and sit down yonder. This is the only person who is faithful to me,"

she continued turning to Edwin, as a tall, homely, pock-marked woman entered, and without even casting a curious glance at the pair, seated herself in the chair beside the bed. "If I had not had Rose, to whom I can tell everything--how do you know the count is coming here, Rose?"

"I don't know, but I'm almost sure of it. The rest of the company went to their rooms half an hour ago. The Herr Count remained alone in the blue drawing room, I could see him from your chamber, standing at the window. His Excellency's rooms were dark, and besides he never comes up here at this hour. Only the Herr Doctor's apartment was lighted. I saw the Herr Count look up here--then he suddenly drew back--I thought he might perhaps have something to say to the Herr Doctor. There, hark!

Don't you hear him now?"

All listened silently. A hesitating step approached over the carpeted floor of the lofty, vaulted corridor, paused as if irresolute, and then approached Edwin's room.

"What shall we say to him?" whispered Edwin.

"Nothing. He would not understand the truth. Don't you say a word to him; I know how he must be addressed."

The next moment there was a knock at the door, and the count entered.