"It is past comprehension!" was all he could say, bewildered at her words thus dislocated from all their natural sequence of association.
"Love me and not marry me!--that means she will marry another!" thought he, with a jealous pang. "Tell me, Angelique," continued he, after several moments of puzzled silence, "is there some inscrutable reason that makes you keep my love and reject my hand?"
"No reason, Le Gardeur! It is mad unreason,--I feel that,--but it is no less true. I love you, but I will not marry you." She spoke with more resolution now. The first plunge was over, and with it her fear and trembling as she sat on the brink.
The iteration drove him beside himself. He seized her hands, and exclaimed with vehemence,--"There is a man--a rival--a more fortunate lover--behind all this, Angelique des Meloises! It is not yourself that speaks, but one that prompts you. You have given your love to another, and discarded me! Is it not so?"
"I have neither discarded you, nor loved another," Angelique equivocated. She played her soul away at this moment with the mental reservation that she had not yet done what she had resolved to do upon the first opportunity--accept the hand of the Intendant Bigot.
"It is well for that other man, if there be one!" Le Gardeur rose and walked angrily across the room two or three times. Angelique was playing a game of chess with Satan for her soul, and felt that she was losing it.
"There was a Sphinx in olden times," said he, "that propounded a riddle, and he who failed to solve it had to die. Your riddle will be the death of me, for I cannot solve it, Angelique!"
"Do not try to solve it, dear Le Gardeur! Remember that when her riddle was solved the Sphinx threw herself into the sea. I doubt that may be my fate! But you are still my friend, Le Gardeur!" added she, seating herself again by his side, in her old fond, coquettish manner. "See these flowers of Amelie's, which I did not place in my hair; I treasure them in my bosom!" She gathered them up as she spoke, kissed them, and placed them in her bosom.
"You are still my friend, Le Gardeur?" Her eyes turned upon him with the old look she could so well assume.
"I am more than a thousand friends, Angelique!" replied he; "but I shall curse myself that I can remain so and see you the wife of another."
The very thought drove him to frenzy. He dashed her hand away and sprang up towards the door, but turned suddenly round. "That curse was not for you, Angelique!" said he, pale and agitated; "it was for myself, for ever believing in the empty love you professed for me.
Good-by! Be happy! As for me, the light goes out of my life, Angelique, from this day forth."
"Oh, stop! stop, Le Gardeur! do not leave me so!" She rose and endeavored to restrain him, but he broke from her, and without adieu or further parley rushed out bareheaded into the street. She ran to the balcony to call him back, and leaning far over it, cried out, "Le Gardeur! Le Gardeur!" That voice would have called him from the dead could he have heard it, but he was already lost in the darkness. A few rapid steps resounded on the distant pavement, and Le Gardeur de Repentigny was lost to her forever!
She waited long on the balcony, looking over it for a chance of hearing his returning steps, but none came. It was the last impulse of her love to save her, but it was useless. "Oh, God!" she exclaimed in a voice of mortal agony, "he is gone forever--my Le Gardeur! my one true lover, rejected by my own madness, and for what?" She thought "For what!" and in a storm of passion, tearing her golden hair over her face, and beating her breast in her rage, she exclaimed,--"I am wicked, unutterably bad, worse and more despicable than the vilest creature that crouches under the bushes on the Batture! How dared I, unwomanly that I am, reject the hand I worship for sake of a hand I should loathe in the very act of accepting it? The slave that is sold in the market is better than I, for she has no choice, while I sell myself to a man whom I already hate, for he is already false to me! The wages of a harlot were more honestly earned than the splendor for which I barter soul and body to this Intendant!"
The passionate girl threw herself upon the floor, nor heeded the blood that oozed from her head, bruised on the hard wood. Her mind was torn by a thousand wild fancies. Sometimes she resolved to go out like the Rose of Sharon and seek her beloved in the city and throw herself at his feet, making him a royal gift of all he claimed of her.
She little knew her own wilful heart. She had seen the world bow to every caprice of hers, but she never had one principle to guide her, except her own pleasure. She was now like a goddess of earth, fallen in an effort to reconcile impossibilities in human hearts, and became the sport of the powers of wickedness.
She lay upon the floor senseless, her hands in a violent clasp. Her glorious hair, torn and disordered, lay over her like the royal robe of a queen stricken from her throne and lying dead upon the floor of her palace.
It was long after midnight, in the cold hours of the morning, when she woke from her swoon. She raised herself feebly upon her elbow, and looked dazedly up at the cold, unfeeling stars that go on shining through the ages, making no sign of sympathy with human griefs. Perseus had risen to his meridian, and Algol, her natal star, alternately darkened and brightened as if it were the scene of some fierce conflict of the powers of light and darkness, like that going on in her own soul.
Her face was stained with hard clots of blood as she rose, cramped and chilled to the bone. The night air had blown coldly upon her through the open lattice; but she would not summon her maid to her assistance. Without undressing she threw herself upon a couch, and utterly worn out by the agitation she had undergone, slept far into the day.
