“Yes, I confess it; you would not,” repeated Andrea like an echo.
“Do me this justice. Step by step have I fought against your love, your tyrannic love. I have watched and prayed and wept; deaf is Heaven, deaf the world, and fate, the implacable statue that has no entrails, that no human love can move, is inexorable. Fate has willed it so.”
“Fate, fate,” repeated Andrea, in a tone of conviction.
“Now, although I know myself to be free from blame, my sensitive conscience makes me decry myself, as if I were a baneful creature. It is useless to struggle against fate; we have bowed to its decrees and we have loved. Oh! Andrea, I would not have said it to you—but at this supreme moment the soul must reveal itself stripped of all artifice; I have sacrificed all to you.”
“You are an angel....
