torture me, and tempt me, and kill me--Much happier would [it] be for
you and for me if in your frantic curiosity you tore my heart from my
breast and tried to read its secrets in it as its life's blood was
dropping from it. Thus you may console me by reducing me to
nothing--but your words I cannot bear; soon they will make me mad,
quite mad, and then I shall utter strange words, and you will believe
them, and we shall be both lost for ever. I tell you I am on the very
verge of insanity; why, cruel girl, do you drive me on: you will
repent and I shall die."

When I repeat his words I wonder at my pertinacious folly; I hardly
know what feelings resis[t]lessly impelled me. I believe it was that
coming out with a determination not to be repulsed I went right
forward to my object without well weighing his replies: I was led by
passion and drew him with frantic heedlessness into the abyss that he
so fearfully avoided--I replied to his terrific words: "You fill me
with affright it is true, dearest father, but you only confirm my
resolution to put an end to this state of doubt. I will not be put off
thus: do you think that I can live thus fearfully from day to day--the
sword in my bosom yet kept from its mortal wound by a hair--a word!--I
demand that dreadful word; though it be as a flash of lightning to
destroy me, speak it.

"Alas! Alas! What am I become? But a few months have elapsed since I
believed that I was all the world to you; and that there was no
happiness or grief for you on earth unshared by your Mathilda--your
child: that happy time is no longer, and what I most dreaded in this
world is come upon me. In the despair of my heart I see what you
cannot conceal: you no longer love me. I adjure you, my father, has
not an unnatural passion seized upon your heart? Am I not the most