"
Looking away from her, with those passionate accents still ringing in
his ears, his only answer was:
"Family honor demands it."
"Norman," she implored, "listen to me, dear! Do not send me away from
you. I will be so good, so devoted. I will fulfill my duties so well, I
will bear myself so worthily that no one shall remember anything against
me; they shall forget my unhappy birth, and think only that you have
chosen well. Oh, Norman, be merciful to me! Leaving you would be a
living death!"
"You cannot suffer more than I do," he said--"and I would give my life
to save you pain; but, my darling, I cannot be so false to the
traditions of my race, so false to the honor of my house, so untrue to
my ancestors and to myself, as to ask you to stay here. There has never
been a blot on our name. The annals of our family are pure and
stainless. I could not ask you to remain here and treat you as my wife,
even to save my life!"
"I have done no wrong, Norman; why should you punish me so cruelly?"
"No, my darling, you have done no wrong--and the punishment is more mine
than yours. I lose the wife whom I love most dearly--I lose my all.
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