It was the last impulse
of her love to save her, but it was useless. "Oh, God!" she
exclaimed in a voice of mortal agony, "he is gone forever--my Le
Gardeur! my one true lover, rejected by my own madness, and for
what?" She thought "For what!" and in a storm of passion, tearing
her golden hair over her face, and beating her breast in her rage,
she exclaimed,--"I am wicked, unutterably bad, worse and more
despicable than the vilest creature that crouches under the bushes
on the Batture! How dared I, unwomanly that I am, reject the hand I
worship for sake of a hand I should loathe in the very act of
accepting it? The slave that is sold in the market is better than
I, for she has no choice, while I sell myself to a man whom I
already hate, for he is already false to me! The wages of a harlot
were more honestly earned than the splendor for which I barter soul
and body to this Intendant!"
The passionate girl threw herself upon the floor, nor heeded the
blood that oozed from her head, bruised on the hard wood. Her mind
was torn by a thousand wild fancies.
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