My dear Ursula,—­Your letter cuts me to the heart, inasmuch as you have needlessly felt such pain; and also because our hearts, for the first time, have failed to understand each other.  If you are not my wife now, it is solely because I cannot marry without my mother’s consent.  Dear, eight thousand francs a year and a pretty cottage on the Loing, why, that’s a fortune, is it not?  You know we calculated that if we kept La Bougival we could lay by half our income every year.  You allowed me that evening, in your uncle’s garden, to consider you mine; you cannot now of yourself break those ties which are common to both of us.—­Ursula, need I tell you that I yesterday informed Monsieur du Rouvre that even if I were free I could not receive a fortune from a young person whom I did not know?  My mother refuses to see you again; I must therefore lose the happiness of our evenings; but surely you will not deprive me of the brief moments I can spend at your window?  This evening, then—­ Nothing can separate us.

“Take this to her, my old woman; she must not be unhappy one moment longer.”

That afternoon at four o’clock, returning from the walk which he always took expressly to pass before Ursula’s house, Savinien found his mistress waiting for him, her face a little pallid from these sudden changes and excitements.

“It seems to me that until now I have never known what the pleasure of seeing you is,” she said to him.

“You once said to me,” replied Savinien, smiling,—­“for I remember all your words,—­’Love lives by patience; we will wait!’ Dear, you have separated love from faith.  Ah! this shall be the end of our quarrels; we will never have another.  You have claimed to love me better than I love you, but—­did I ever doubt you?” he said, offering her a bouquet of wild-flowers arranged to express his thoughts.

“You have never had any reason to doubt me,” she replied; “and, besides, you don’t know all,” she added, in a troubled voice.

Ursula had refused to receive letters by the post.  But that afternoon, without being able even to guess at the nature of the trick, she had found, a few moments before Savinien’s arrival, a letter tossed on her sofa which contained the words:  “Tremble! a rejected lover can become a tiger.”

Withstanding Savinien’s entreaties, she refused to tell him, out of prudence, the secret of her fears.  The delight of seeing him again, after she had thought him lost to her, could alone have made her recover from the mortal chill of terror.  The expectation of indefinite evil is torture to every one; suffering assumes the proportions of the unknown, and the unknown is the infinite of the soul.  To Ursula the pain was exquisite.  Something without her bounded at the slightest noise; yet she was afraid of silence, and suspected even the walls of collusion.  Even her sleep was restless.  Goupil, who knew nothing of her nature, delicate as that of a flower, had found, with the instinct of evil, the poison that could wither and destroy her.