The duchess walked to the door, but there she turned.  “My Mother,” she said, in a voice horribly calm, “this Frenchman is one of my brothers.”

“Remain, therefore, my daughter,” said the old woman, after a pause.

The jesuitism of this answer revealed such love and such regret, that a man of less firmness than the general would have betrayed his joy in the midst of a peril so novel to him.  But what value could there be in the words, looks, gestures of a love that must be hidden from the eyes of a lynx, the claws of a tiger?  The Sister came back.

“You see, my brother,” she said, “what I have dared to do that I might for one moment speak to you of your salvation, and tell you of the prayers which day by day my soul offers to heaven on your behalf.  I have committed a mortal sin,—­I have lied.  How many days of penitence to wash out that lie!  But I shall suffer for you.  You know not, my brother, the joy of loving in heaven, of daring to avow affections that religion has purified, that have risen to the highest regions, that at last we know and feel with the soul alone.  If the doctrines—­if the spirit of the saint to whom we owe this refuge had not lifted me above the anguish of earth to a world, not indeed where she is, but far above my lower life, I could not have seen you now.  But I can see you, I can hear you, and remain calm.”

“Antoinette,” said the general, interrupting these words, “suffer me to see you—­you, whom I love passionately, to madness, as you once would have had me love you.”

“Do not call me Antoinette, I implore you:  memories of the past do me harm.  See in me only the Sister Theresa, a creature trusting all to the divine pity.  And,” she added, after a pause, “subdue yourself, my brother.  Our Mother would separate us instantly if your face betrayed earthly passions, or your eyes shed tears.”

The general bowed his head, as if to collect himself; when he again lifted his eyes to the grating he saw between two bars the pale, emaciated, but still ardent face of the nun.  Her complexion, where once had bloomed the loveliness of youth,—­where once there shone the happy contrast of a pure, clear whiteness with the colors of a Bengal rose,—­now had the tints of a porcelain cup through which a feeble light showed faintly.  The beautiful hair of which this woman was once so proud was shaven; a white band bound her brows and was wrapped around her face.  Her eyes, circled with dark shadows due to the austerities of her life, glanced at moments with a feverish light, of which their habitual calm was but the mask.  In a word, of this woman nothing remained but her soul.