"This Englishman is of thine own years, not far above thine own rank.Thou mayst share his thoughts in life,--thou mayst sleep beside him in the same grave in death! And I--but THAT view of the future should concern us not.Look into thy heart, and thou wilt see that till again my shadow crossed thy path, there had grown up for this thine equal a pure and calm affection that would have ripened into love.Hast thou never pictured to thyself a home in which thy partner was thy young wooer?""Never!" said Viola, with sudden energy,--"never but to feel that such was not the fate ordained me.And, oh!" she continued, rising suddenly, and, putting aside the tresses that veiled her face, she fixed her eyes upon the questioner,--"and, oh! whoever thou art that thus wouldst read my soul and shape my future, do not mistake the sentiment that, that--" she faltered an instant, and went on with downcast eyes,--"that has fascinated my thoughts to thee.Do not think that I could nourish a love unsought and unreturned.It is not love that I feel for thee, stranger.Why should I? Thou hast never spoken to me but to admonish,--and now, to wound!" Again she paused, again her voice faltered; the tears trembled on her eyelids; she brushed them away and resumed.
"No, not love,--if that be love which I have heard and read of, and sought to simulate on the stage,--but a more solemn, fearful, and, it seems to me, almost preternatural attraction, which makes me associate thee, waking or dreaming, with images that at once charm and awe.Thinkest thou, if it were love, that I could speak to thee thus; that," she raised her looks suddenly to his, "mine eyes could thus search and confront thine own? Stranger, Iask but at times to see, to hear thee! Stranger, talk not to me of others.Forewarn, rebuke, bruise my heart, reject the not unworthy gratitude it offers thee, if thou wilt, but come not always to me as an omen of grief and trouble.Sometimes have Iseen thee in my dreams surrounded by shapes of glory and light;thy looks radiant with a celestial joy which they wear not now.
Stranger, thou hast saved me, and I thank and bless thee! Is that also a homage thou wouldst reject?" With these words, she crossed her arms meekly on her bosom, and inclined lowlily before him.Nor did her humility seem unwomanly or abject, nor that of mistress to lover, of slave to master, but rather of a child to its guardian, of a neophyte of the old religion to her priest.
Zanoni's brow was melancholy and thoughtful.He looked at her with a strange expression of kindness, of sorrow, yet of tender affection, in his eyes; but his lips were stern, and his voice cold, as he replied,--"Do you know what you ask, Viola? Do you guess the danger to yourself--perhaps to both of us--which you court? Do you know that my life, separated from the turbulent herd of men, is one worship of the Beautiful, from which I seek to banish what the Beautiful inspires in most? As a calamity, I shun what to man seems the fairest fate,--the love of the daughters of earth.At present I can warn and save thee from many evils; if I saw more of thee, would the power still be mine? You understand me not.
What I am about to add, it will be easier to comprehend.I bid thee banish from thy heart all thought of me, but as one whom the Future cries aloud to thee to avoid.Glyndon, if thou acceptest his homage, will love thee till the tomb closes upon both.I, too," he added with emotion,--"I, too, might love thee!""You!" cried Viola, with the vehemence of a sudden impulse of delight, of rapture, which she could not suppress; but the instant after, she would have given worlds to recall the exclamation.
"Yes, Viola, I might love thee; but in that love what sorrow and what change! The flower gives perfume to the rock on whose heart it grows.A little while, and the flower is dead; but the rock still endures,--the snow at its breast, the sunshine on its summit.Pause,--think well.Danger besets thee yet.For some days thou shalt be safe from thy remorseless persecutor; but the hour soon comes when thy only security will be in flight.If the Englishman love thee worthily, thy honour will be dear to him as his own; if not, there are yet other lands where love will be truer, and virtue less in danger from fraud and force.Farewell;my own destiny I cannot foresee except through cloud and shadow.
I know, at least, that we shall meet again; but learn ere then, sweet flower, that there are more genial resting-places than the rock."He turned as he spoke, and gained the outer door where Gionetta discreetly stood.Zanoni lightly laid his hand on her arm.With the gay accent of a jesting cavalier, he said,--"The Signor Glyndon woos your mistress; he may wed her.I know your love for her.Disabuse her of any caprice for me.I am a bird ever on the wing."He dropped a purse into Gionetta's hand as he spoke, and was gone.
