"You follow me too closely," she said, in low, faltering accents; "you
allow me too scanty room to draw my breath. Do you know what will be the
end of this?" "I know well what must be the end," he replied.
"Tell me, then," said Miriam, "that I may compare your foreboding with
my own. Mine is a very dark one."
"There can be but one result, and that soon," answered the model. "You
must throw off your present mask and assume another. You must vanish out
of the scene: quit Rome with me, and leave no trace whereby to follow
you. It is in my power, as you well know, to compel your acquiescence in
my bidding. You are aware of the penalty of a refusal."
"Not that penalty with which you would terrify me," said Miriam;
"another there may be, but not so grievous." "What is that other?"
he inquired. "Death! simply death!" she answered. "Death," said her
persecutor, "is not so simple and opportune a thing as you imagine. You
are strong and warm with life. Sensitive and irritable as your spirit
is, these many months of trouble, this latter thraldom in which I hold
you, have scarcely made your cheek paler than I saw it in your girlhood.
Miriam,--for I forbear to speak another name, at which these leaves
would shiver above our heads,--Miriam, you cannot die!"
"Might not a dagger find my heart?" said she, for the first time meeting
his eyes. "Would not poison make an end of me? Will not the Tiber drown
me?"
"It might," he answered; "for I allow that you are mortal. But, Miriam,
believe me, it is not your fate to die while there remains so much to be
sinned and suffered in the world. We have a destiny which we must needs
fulfil together. I, too, have struggled to escape it. I was as anxious
as yourself to break the tie between us,--to bury the past in a
fathomless grave,--to make it impossible that we should ever meet, until
you confront me at the bar of Judgment! You little can imagine what
steps I took to render all this secure; and what was the result?
Our strange interview in the bowels of the earth convinced me of the
futility of my design."
"Ah, fatal chance!" cried Miriam, covering her face with her hands.
"Yes, your heart trembled with horror when you recognized me," rejoined
he; "but you did not guess that there was an equal horror in my own!"
"Why would not the weight of earth above our heads have crumbled down
upon us both, forcing us apart, but burying us equally?" cried Miriam,
in a burst of vehement passion. "O, that we could have wandered in those
dismal passages till we both perished, taking opposite paths in the
darkness, so that when we lay down to die, our last breaths might not
mingle!"