No, no, Henry; swear to me by our love that you will never, unless here in this room, address me otherwise than your queen.

Swear to me that, beyond these walls, you will be to me only the respectful servant of your queen, and at the same time the proud earl and lord, of whom it is said that never has a woman been able to touch his heart.
Swear to me that you will not, by a look, by a smile, by even the gentlest pressure of the hand, betray what beyond this room is a crime for both of us.

Let this room be the temple of our love; but when we once pass its threshold, we will not profane the sweet mysteries of our happiness, by allowing unholy eyes to behold even a single ray of it.
Shall it be so, my Henry?
"Yes, it shall be so!" said he, with a troubled voice; "although I must confess that this dreadful illusion often tortures me almost to death.
Oh, Geraldine, when I meet you elsewhere, when I observe the eye so icy and immovable, with which you meet my look, I feel as it were my heart convulsed; and I say to myself: 'This is not she, whom I love--not the tender, passionate woman, whom in the darkness of the night I sometimes lock in my arms.

This is Catharine, the queen, but not my loved one.

A woman cannot so disguise herself; art goes not so far as to falsify the entire nature, the innermost being and life of a person.' Oh, there have been hours, awful, horrible hours, when it seemed to me as though all this were a delusion, a mystification--as though in some way an evil demon assumed the queen's form by night to mock me, poor frenzied visionary, with a happiness that has no existence, but lives only in my imagination.