FRANCESCA.  Thou canst forsake me, then,
To spare thyself a little bashful pain? 
Paolo, dost thou know what ’tis for me,
A woman—­nay, a dame of highest rank—­
To lose my purity? to walk a path
Whose slightest slip may fill my ear with sounds
That hiss me out to infamy and death? 
Have I no secret pangs, no self-respect,
No husband’s look to bear?  O! worse than these,
I must endure his loathsome touch; be kind
When he would dally with his wife, and smile
To see him play thy part.  Pah! sickening thought! 
From that thou art exempt.  Thou shalt not go! 
Thou dost not love me!

PAOLO.  Love thee!  Standing here,
With countless miseries upon my head,
I say, my love for thee grows day by day. 
It palters with my conscience, blurs my thoughts
Of duty, and confuses my ideas
Of right and wrong.  Ere long, it will persuade
My shaking manhood that all this is just.

FRANCESCA.  Let it!  I’ll blazon it to all the world,
Ere I will lose thee.  Nay, if I had choice,
Between our love and my lost innocence,
I tell thee calmly, I would dare again
The deed which we have done.  O! thou art cruel
To fly me, like a coward, for thy ease. 
When thou art gone, thou’lt flatter thy weak heart
With hopes and speculations; and thou’lt swear
I suffer naught, because thou dost not see. 
I will not live to bear it!

PAOLO.  Die,—­’twere best;
Tis the last desperate comfort of our sin.

  FRANCESCA.  I’ll kill myself!

PAOLO.  And so would I, with joy;
But crime has made a craven of me.  O! 
For some good cause to perish in!  Something
A man might die for, looking in God’s face;
Not slinking out of life with guilt like mine
Piled on the shoulders of a suicide!

  FRANCESCA.  Where wilt thou go?

PAOLO.  I care not; anywhere
Out of this Rimini.  The very things
That made the pleasures of my innocence
Have turned against me.  There is not a tree,
Nor house, nor church, nor monument, whose face
Took hold upon my thoughts, that does not frown
Balefully on me.  From their marble tombs
My ancestors scowl at me; and the night
Thickens to hear their hisses.  I would pray,
But heaven jeers at it.  Turn where’er I will,
A curse pursues me.

FRANCESCA.  Heavens!  O, say not so! 
I never cursed thee, love; I never moved
My little finger, ere I looked to thee
For my instruction.

PAOLO.  But my gentleness
Seems to reproach me; and, instead of joy,
It whispers horror!

  FRANCESCA.  Cease! cease!

  PAOLO.  I must go.

FRANCESCA.  And I must follow.  All that I call life
Is bound in thee.  I could endure for thee
More agonies than thou canst catalogue—­
For thy sake, love—­bearing the ill for thee! 
With thee, the devils could not so contrive
That I would blench or falter from my love! 
Without thee, heaven were torture!