As for
you--you have your mother to care for now; will not that fill your life
with gladness?"
"How soon--do--you go away?" she asked, in a low voice.
"Almost immediately," he said, watching her. She had not shed a
single tear, but there was a strange look on her face. "Nothing
is to be said about it. I shall be supposed to have started on a
travelling-expedition, that is all."
"And you go--forever?"
"Yes."
She rose.
"We shall see you yet before you go?"
"Natalie," he said, in despair, "I had come to try to say good-bye to
you; but I cannot, my darling, I cannot! I must see you again."
"I do not understand why you should wish to see again one like me," she
said, slowly, and the voice did not sound like her own voice. "I have
given you over to death: and, more than that, to a death that is not
honorable; and, yet I cannot even tell you that I am grieved. But there
is pain here." She put her hand over her heart; she staggered back a
little bit; he caught her.
"Natalie--Natalie!"
"It is a pain that kills," she said, wildly.
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