“I see,” she exclaimed, with a great change in her tone, “there is no more room in the heart which I deserted!  You have replaced me with that Rebecca!”

“It is true I love her,” her rejoined, “but not as you suppose.  Do not try to understand how, for you cannot understand.  Heaven knows that I would have wished to associate you with me in the same love and the same glory, but it is impossible.  Once we were ships in company, sailing side by side—­I thought with the same sailing orders—­but you stole away in the night and I have had to direct my course alone toward a sea eternally forbidden to you.  Oh, if you only knew how far I am already from you!  The being who speaks to me by your lips is not known to me—­I see her not!  I do not know who you are.  The only bond between us is the chain the law imposes—­let us carry it between us but each with the share apart.”

“What is to become of me?” cried Cesarine, forced to try her last weapon.  “You picked up a starving boy on the road and was kind to him.  I am an outcast at your feet, hungry for love—­succor me, no less kindly!  I am a living creature, and I may be taught many things.  Utilize me by your intelligence.  Can I not be your pupil, your helper, your assistant?  Do for me what Daniels has done for his daughter—­initiate me into science, explain your labels to me and, associate me in your work.”

“Teach you what you would sell!” he burst forth at the end of his endurance.

“Can you believe that?” she faltered, receding a step, turning white and trembling in the fear that he knew all.

“Believe?  I am certain that you are lying now as always!” he thundered.  “It is impossible that your remorse should be sincere; it must mask some infamy.  You have perpetrated faults which are unattended by remorse.  Enough!  If I am wrong, and you really do repent, it will not take a minute, but years for you to be believed, and it does not concern me.  Apply to the Church, which alone can redeem and absolve such culprits as you.”

Convinced that she had lost the battle and forgetting her cunning, Madame Clemenceau threw off the veil and showed herself the direct offspring of the infernal regions.  Her voice sounded like the hiss of fiery serpents, and her frame quivered as if she stood in a current of consuming vapor.  Her eyes, too, wore that painful expression of depth of agony as though her disappointment were excruciating.  With his pardon, love, protection and fortune, she might have defied Von Sendlingen and his league, but, alone, she was a stormy petrel flapping its insignificant pinions in the face of the God of Storms.  Felix refused to be cheated by her and she was lost.  But the criminal hates to stand alone in the dock; she wished to be terribly avenged because he was so great and so implacable.  She would show that she could be extreme, too; if she were not encouraged to love, she would hate.

“Oh, you pitiless one, because you have right on your side and your conscience,” she screamed; “I will drag you down with me into curses and blasphemies, and others as well! whoever you hold dear shall perish with us!”