“But it is true that you love her as if she were!” she exclaimed with joyous haste.
“Calumny may be wrong as to the facts, but failing facts she has intentions, desires, hopes to go upon. Answer me, can you say that we are innocent?”
“No. I, at any rate, am not. The scandal that has dragged my name in the mud is a just punishment,” said Pepa sadly. “And if I think of it with less horror than I ought to feel, it is because there is so much, so very much to excuse part--most--the foundation of the report. You are upright, honest, steadfast--I am not. I have allowed myself to cherish feelings in my heart in opposition to my duty; I am a wicked woman, Leon; I do not deserve your love; I am guilty, and I cannot feel that delicate horror of calumny you feel.”
“Pepa, Pepa, do not talk so,” said Leon grasping her hand. “It is not thus that I have seen you, dreamed of, as, by degrees, you have conquered my heart and become sovereign of my affections.”
“But if you cannot love me as I am,” she said, her words almost choked with grief and bitterness, “why did you not come in time? Oh! if you had come when I wanted you, you might have found me lofty and pure! What a high and holy devotion--worthy of you indeed--you would have found under the childish follies which were nothing but the mad outbursts of an oppressed heart and a fevered fancy, if you had come in time and vouchsafed a loving word to the wilful girl, mad and foolish as she was, what a treasure of devotion would have been yours!--it was reserved for you, and in your hands it would have been refined and purified. I was a rough ore, apparently of no value--nay, I might have been a misfortune to the owner--you thought so? But all I needed was to fall into hands that were not put out to take me; I was an instrument that could yield no music excepting in the hands for which I was born, and without my natural master all was jangling discord. Do not complain then if you now find me somewhat wanting in principles and moral sense. I have suffered much; I have led a life of constant and fearful struggle with myself, my life has been passed in utter disharmony with those I have had to live with; I felt myself scorned and misunderstood and that has always weighed upon my soul; it made me unreasonable and perverse and so, by degrees, I lost that purity of soul which once I cherished for you--you who would not have it as a gift! I am not so strict as you are; my conscience is less sensitive, and I have no courage left for further sacrifices, for my heart is weary and as full of wounds as a madman who tries to kill himself. I cannot admit that the world has the right to require me to torture myself any more; it has imposed sufferings enough upon me--and so I dare to ask you too to be less severely strong, to ignore the moral susceptibilities of society, to make some concession to feeling, to remain here and see me every day, to pay me some portion of the debt you owe me--by loving a little.”