Notwithstanding what she had said to Ashe, she did believe--with a
clinging and desperate faith--that Cliffe loved her. Had she really
doubted it, her conduct would have been inexplicable, even to herself,
and he must have seemed a madman. What else could have induced him to
burden himself with a woman on such an errand and at such a time? She
had promised, indeed, to be his lieutenant and comrade--and to return to
Venice if her health should be unequal to the common task. But in spite
of the sternness with which he put that task first--a sternness which
was one of his chief attractions for Kitty--she knew well that her
coming threw a glamour round it which it had never yet possessed, that
the passion she had aroused in him, and the triumph of binding her to
his fate, possessed him--for the moment at any rate--heart and soul. He
had the poet's resources, too, and a mind wherewith to organize and
govern. She shrank from him still, but she already envisaged the time
when her being would sink into and fuse with his, and like two colliding
stars they would flame together to one fiery death.
Thoughts like these ran in her mind.
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