"She shuddered--and I saw a spasm of exquisite pain cloud her features as she averted her head from me, and the look of trembling fear I had before remarked crept over her. I was shocked to see so much of the slave had entered her soul. I told her this; I told her she was being degraded by the very duties which she was devoting herself, body and soul, to perform; I told her that she must be free; she looked wonderingly, but I continued. 'Is not the very name of liberty dear and exhilarating? does it not draw you irresistibly onward? is not the very thought of casting your heavy chains from off you full of new and inexpressible joy? Poor prisoner, do you not yearn to breathe without a fear? would you not with transport escape from your jailer to a home of love and freedom?' "Hitherto she had fancied that I but regretted her sorrows as she did, and repined as she did over a fate whose real misery she alone could entirely feel; she repented having spoken so openly--yet she loved me for my unfeigned sympathy; but now she saw that something more was meant; she looked earnestly at me, as if to read my heart; she saw its wishes in my eyes, and shrunk from them as from a snake, as she exclaimed, 'Never, dear Rupert, speak thus to me again, or we must again part--I have a son.' "The radiance of angelic love lighted up her face as she uttered these words; and then, my error and weakness being her strength, she resumed the self-possession she had lost during our previous conversation; with bewitching grace she held out her hand to me, and in a voice modulated by the soul of persuasion, said, 'Let us be friends, Rupert, such as we once were, brother and sister; I will not believe that you are returned only to pain and injure me--I am happy in my children--stay but a little, and you will see how foolish I have been to complain at all. You also will love my boy.' "Would you not think that these words had sufficed to cure my madness and banish every guilty project? Had you seen her, her inimitable grace of attitude, the blushing, tender expression of her face, and her modest, earnest manner, a manner which spoke the maternal nature, such as Catholics imagine it, without a tincture of the wife, a girlish, yet enthusiastic rapture at the very thought of her child, you would have known that every scheme I meditated was riveted faster, every desire to make her my own for ever more fixed and eager. I went on to urge her, till I saw every feature give token of distress; and at last she suddenly left me, as if unable any longer to bear my pertinacity. She left me without a word, but I saw her face bathed in tears. I was indeed insane. These tears, which sprung from anguish of soul to think that her childhood's companion should thus show himself an injurer instead of a friend, I interpreted into signs of relenting--into a struggle with her heart." CHAPTER XXIX