"That is true," she answered bitterly; "you never promised anything. You left me to do all the vowing. It is unpardonable of me to reproach you, I have no claim upon you. I forced myself upon you--why don't you tell me so? Shout it in my ears! Despise me, kick me--I deserve no better. I have been guilty of the deadly sin of loving you madly, and forgetting everything else in the world for that. You are quite right to punish me for it. And see how low I have sunk! see what my love has brought me to! You may curse me, you may ill-treat me; I love you all the same, Wilhelm--do what you will, I love you all the same." She was so distraught that she could not stay in the dining room. With a sudden violent movement she grasped his arm and dragged him away with her upstairs to the bedroom, where she threw herself exhausted on the sofa. Wilhelm stood before her, looking thoroughly crestfallen, and wishing devoutly that he had the dread hour behind him. The silence frightened Pilar. She raised her head, and said in a weak, changed voice: "It is all over, is it not? Tell me that it was only a bad dream--tell me that you will not frighten me like that again." "Pilar," he returned miserably, "I wish you would listen to me quietly. You are generally so reasonable." "No, no," she cried; "I am not reasonable--I will not be reasonable. I love you out of all reason. I shall repeat it a thousand times, till you give up talking to me of reason." "And yet it is impossible for me to stay in this house." She straightened herself up, looked at him for a moment, and then said with unnatural calmness, as she wiped the tears from her eyes: "Very well; but if you go I shall go with you." "What! you would leave your home, your friends, your beloved Paris--give up all you have been accustomed to, and follow me to Germany?" "To Germany--to the Inferno--wherever you like." "You do not mean it seriously." "I do mean it, very seriously. I cannot live without you." "But you have duties, you have your children--" "I have no children, I have only you. And if my children were a barrier between you and me, I would strangle them with my own hands." She spoke with such savage determination that he shuddered. But the battle must be fought out. He must not yield now. "There is nothing for it," he said after a pause, during which he stood with downcast eyes, fumbling nervously with the buttons of his morning coat. "Our position would be equally wretched wherever we were. Fate is stronger than we are. I do not see how we are to escape it. Wherever we went, we should have to hide the truth, and surround ourselves with a tissue of lies, and that I cannot stand. I would rather die."