Yes,
madame, I loved you: I saw in you a goddess, where others saw only a
coquette. I adored you as an innocent sacrifice to envy and malice;
I saw a martyr's crown upon your brow, and wished to change it for
the myrtle-crown of marriage. And my love and hopes are dust and
ashes; it is enough to drive me mad--enough to stifle me with rage
and shame." Carried away by passion, the prince ran wildly through
the saloon, gasping for air, struggling for composure, and now and
then uttering words of imprecation and despair.
Louise waited, in silence and resignation, the end of this stormy
crisis. She questioned her heart if this bitter hour was not
sufficient atonement for all her faults and follies; if the agony
she now suffered did not wipe out and extirpate the past.
The prince still paced the room violently. Suddenly, as if a new
thought had seized him, he remained standing in the middle of the
saloon, and looked at Louise with a strangely altered countenance.
She had forgotten for a moment the part she was condemned to play,
and leaned, pale and sad, against the window.
Perhaps he heard her sorrowful sighs--perhaps he saw her tears as
they rolled one by one from her eyes, and fell like pearls upon her
small white hands.
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