The day was calm and breathless. Scarcely a leaf stirred in the trees, and the long shadows slept without a ruffle on the turf. The stillness of the place contrasted strangely with the tempest of emotions that was raging in my heart. I longed to get into the air. I felt the house stifling, and thought that I should breathe more freely among the branches of the little wood that looked so green and cool down by the margin of the stream. There was a rustic seat there under a canopy of drooping boughs, close upon the water and the bridge, where we could enjoy the luxury of perfect solitude. Requesting her to follow me, I went alone into the wood.
The interval seemed to me long before she came; and when she did come, she was paler and more agitated than before. I tried to give her confidence by repeated protestations of my devotion; and as she seemed to gather courage from the earnestness of my language, I again and again renewed the pledges which bound me to her, at any risk our position might demand.
"It is that," she exclaimed, "which gives me hope and comfort. You have had time to reflect on these pledges, and weigh the consequences they involve, and you now repeat them to me with an ardor which I should do you a great wrong to doubt. I entirely trust to you. If I am deceived, I will try still to be just, and hardly blame you so much as the world, which few men can relinquish for love."
There was a pause, during which she gradually recovered her self-composure. I felt that these expressions gave me a nobler motive for surrendering every thing for her sake. She seemed to make me a hero by the penalties my devotion enforced upon me; and I was eager to prove myself capable of the most heroic sacrifices. In the abyss of an overwhelming passion, where reason is imprisoned by the senses, every man is willing to be a martyr.
"You have required of me, Astræa," said I, "no, not required; but you have placed before me the possibility of sufferings and trials resulting from our union--loss of friends, the surrender of many things that enter into the ordinary scheme of married life, and that are considered by the world indispensable to its happiness. I am ready to relinquish them all. I have looked for this end. I know not why it should be so, nor does it give me a moment's concern. I only know that I love you passionately, and that life is desolation to me without you. Let us therefore have no further delay. All impediments are now out of our path. We have our destinies in our own hands. Let us knit them into one, and disappoint the scandal and malignity which, from that hour, can exercise no further influence over us."