have been made mad. You have been fooled, tricked, duped, trapped, made the subject of experiment. But now I am sane I am going to cure you. Volmer hypnotised you for his own devilish ends, and made you believe that I was beautiful. It is a lie! It has all been a lie! Go! go!"
"Do you send me from you, Nasha? I loved you, and I love you—but, alas! I am not only a blind man now, I am poor, helpless, ruined!"
"Ruined? By whom? Is that Volmer's work, too?"
"He is dead, Nasha!"
"Dead! He deserved death! Forger, thief, gambler, sorcerer!"
"Dearest, for my sake, forgive him. I forgave."
"He did not deserve your forgiveness! I do not deserve it! I am his sister."
"You are my wife, Nasha, my beloved, my"
"You do not believe what I have told you. You think me raving! But it is true."
"I must believe because you say it. But if it be true, what matter? I loved you for a beauty which you tell me is an illusion of my senses, but I also loved you for the soul within. I cannot cease to love you till you persuade me that you have ceased to be what I have proved you—pure, noble, generous, and brave. You are none the less the Nasha of my heart for this strange story—my Nasha, whom I yearned anew for when this darkness came upon How I me. How I craved for you! How I longed for the sound of your voice, the touch of your hand! All my life I had been seeking you, until the happy day when Volmer brought me here. And now—oh, my darling, I will not fetter you—you shall be freed! I am a poor, helpless creature, not the man you married. You do not deserve to have such a burden thrust upon you""
"Ivo, Ivo, you are more precious to me than anything in the world but this!" cried Nasha, raising herself and pressing the baby's waxen fingers to his face; "and this is only so precious because it is yours, too."
"But a helpless beggar, Nasha! Think of the shadow on your life, and how it will spoil it."
"Not so, dear love, not so. You are my sun, my world, my all. Thank God, you have no home but this! Now, indeed, I truly feel that you are mine, my own twin soul, and nought can come between us."
"She drew the blind man down."
She drew the blind man down until his brown head rested on her bosom beside their child's, and both were encircled in her passionate embrace. Instead of taking up a load, she was conscious in that moment of losing a heavy weight of care and trouble. What Ivo called a burden was indeed a burden of joy. Love, satisfied, content, sent a new strength coursing through her pulses, and Duty, wearing the aspect of an angel, whispered the words retribution, expiation, which fell like music on her ear. Joyfully her glad soul re-echoed the soft accents, and never, since the world began, did penance prove so easy, nor expiation so sweet.
