You are in the right now, as you always have been. You
were right, of course, in always doling out the tokens of your love in
such scanty measure as your pride and your priests would allow. They
ought to canonize you--those holy men! I doubt if they have another
disciple so superior to all human weaknesses. It must be very
gratifying to so eminent a Christian to be able to forgive plenarily,
without danger of the favor being returned. I have nothing to urge
against your decision--that we part forever. You will have no difficulty
in forgetting me, whom you ought never to have stooped to. Yet I will
give you one caution. I am not romantic, as you know, and I generally
mean what I say. If you should think hereafter of bestowing yourself on
some worthier object, hesitate a little for _his_ sake, or wait till I
am dead; otherwise, the day that makes his happiness certain may bring
him very near his grave."
His voice had changed during the last words into a growl of savage
menace, and his forehead was black and furrowed with passion.
It might have been his own excited fancy, or the passing just then of a
light cloud over the moon; but, for an instant, he thought he saw her
steady lip quiver and tremble.
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