My eternal life
is all that trouble has left me to offer up to you. I am old now
with weeping; I am neither young nor fair; and in any case, you
could not respect the nun who became a wife; no love, not even
motherhood, could give me absolution. . . . What can you say to
outweigh the uncounted thoughts that have gathered in my heart
during the past five years, thoughts that have changed, and worn,
and blighted it? I ought to have given a heart less sorrowful to
God."
"What can I say? Dear Antoinette, I will say this, that I love
you; that affection, love, a great love, the joy of living in
another heart that is ours, utterly and wholly ours, is so rare a
thing and so hard to find, that I doubted you, and put you to
sharp proof; but now, today, I love you, Antoinette, with all my
soul's strength. . . . If you will follow me into solitude, I
will hear no voice but yours, I will see no other face."
"Hush, Armand! You are shortening the little time that we may
be together here on earth."
"Antoinette, will you come with me?"
"I am never away from you. My life is in your heart, not
through the selfish ties of earthly happiness, or vanity, or
enjoyment; pale and withered as I am, I live here for you, in
the breast of God. As God is just, you shall be happy----"
"Words, words all of it! Pale and withered? How if I want you?
How if I cannot be happy without you? Do you still think of
nothing but duty with your lover before you? Is he never to come
first and above all things else in your heart? In time past you
put social success, yourself, heaven knows what, before him; now
it is God, it is the welfare of my soul! In Sister Theresa I
find the Duchess over again, ignorant of the happiness of love,
insensible as ever, beneath the semblance of sensibility.
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