“No, Ludovico; not at the thought of your being married to the Contessa Violante!  That is a thought which may break my heart.  But it does not make me shudder, as that other thought does;—­the thought of—­of—–­of loving one, who—­who—­who owes his love to another; the thought of taking by stealth whatever share of love may be given to me stolen from the rightful owner.  Never! never! never!  Would you then be mine,—­all mine, for ever, and ever, and ever!  Oh, my love, my love!  If you don’t understand this, love has not opened your eyes as it has mine.  Do you think that I could endure the thought of being married to another man?  The bare notion is horror—­ horror—­horror!  Would I not rather die this minute; ay, or die a thousand times!”

Again Ludovico got up from his chair and paced the room, sometimes stopping abruptly in apparently deep thought, and sometimes resuming his walk with every appearance of despair in his face and gestures.  It is needless to say that Paolina had spoken the very inmost truth that was in her heart in all its entirety; but she had also succeeded in making him feel that it was so.

There is often a feeling in a man’s mind on such occasions—­a feeling too closely allied to selfishness—­which leads him to be dissatisfied with what seems to him the unwillingness of a woman to make sacrifices to her love.  And often a woman, knowing this, and calculating mostly falsely, is urged to yield by a desire of proving that she does not deserve such a suspicion.  But Ludovico had no such thought in his mind.  He knew that Paolina had not only spoken truly, but had represented her mind accurately.  It was not that she “respected herself.”  The poor child had never received any lessons which could teach her such respect.  She had been perfectly ready to accept the social position of Ludovico’s mistress, until the power of a great, true, and pure love had unsealed the eyes of her understanding, of her imagination, and of her heart to the nature—­ not of the social position of such a tie as that proposed to her—­ but of the absolute imperious necessity of sharing such a love with none.  Putting all notion of principle, of duty, of the understood expediency of conforming to laws divine, and human, out of the question, such a love as Paolina felt demands this with a cogency of insistence that cannot be set aside.  And the man who hopes, or flatters himself, or suffers himself to be persuaded that such a love has been given to him upon any other terms, is—­he may rely upon it with the certainty due to an eternal law of nature—­ deceived.  The quality of the love which may have so been given to him is of a different kind.

After awhile Ludovico came again and stopped directly in front of the chair in which Paolina was sitting; but he remained standing, and placing his two hands, one on either of her shoulders, and looking down into her face with moist eyes, he said,—­