Her language, and the dignity of her manner, stung me. She seemed to tower above me in the strength of her will, and the firmness with which she went through a scene that shattered my nerves fearfully, and made me equally irresolute of speech and purpose. While I was harrowed by an agony that fluttered in every pulse, she was perfectly calm and collected, and, rising quietly from her seat, turned away to leave me.
This action roused me from the stupor of indecision. The situation in which she was placed--making so new a demand upon my feelings--gave me a sort of advantage which I thought might enable me to recover the ground I had lost. By the exercise of magnanimity in such circumstances, I should vindicate myself in her estimation, and prove myself once more worthy of the opinion she had originally formed of me. It was something nobler, I thought, to embrace ruin at this moment for her sake, than if I had known it all along, and had come to that conclusion by a deliberate process of reasoning. This train of subtle sophistry, which has taken up some space to detail, struck me like a flash of light on the instant I thought I was about to lose her. I could bear all things but that, and could suffer all things to avert it. And so again I became her suitor, in a kind of proud generosity, that flattered itself by stooping to gain its own ends. How mean and selfish the human heart is when our desires are set in opposition to our duties!
I sprang forward, and clasped her eagerly by the hands. I flung myself on my knees before her. Tears leaped into my eyes. I told her that I had wronged her--that we had wronged each other--that I had never wavered in my faith--that we were bound to each other--and that we could commit no crime now except that of doubting, at either side, the truth of the love which had brought us there, and for which I, like her, had relinquished the world forever.
She had a woman's heart, full of tenderness and pity; and it is the tendency of woman's nature to forgive and believe where the affections are interested, without exacting much proof or penalty. She bent over me, and raised me in her arms. The storm had passed away, and she trusted in me implicitly again.