“I will never be yours,” she replied, with a coldness which was becoming more and more icy, “if you do not make some change in your language, and manners, and feelings.  In your present state I certainly do not fear you.  When you appeared to me good and generous, I might have yielded to you, half from fear and half from affection.  But from the moment I cease to care for you, I also cease to be afraid of you.  Improve your manners, improve your mind, and we will see.”

“Very good,” I said, “that is a promise I can understand.  I will act on it, and if I cannot be happy, I will have my revenge.”

“Take your revenge as much as you please,” she said.  “That will only make me despise you.”

So saying, she drew from her bosom a piece of paper, and burnt it in the flame of her candle.

“What are you doing?” I exclaimed.

“I am burning a letter I had written to you,” she answered.  “I wanted to make you listen to reason, but it is quite useless; one cannot reason with brutes.”

“Give me that letter at once,” I cried, rushing at her to seize the burning paper.

But she withdrew it quickly and, fearlessly extinguishing it in her hand, threw the candle at my feet and fled in the darkness.  I ran after her, but in vain.  She was in her room before I could get there, and had slammed the door and drawn the bolts.  I could hear the voice of Mademoiselle Leblanc asking her young mistress the cause of her fright.

“It is nothing,” replied Edmee’s trembling voice, “nothing but a joke.”

I went into the garden, and strode up and down the walks at a furious rate.  My anger gave place to the most profound melancholy.  Edmee, proud and daring, seemed to me more desirable than ever.  It is the nature of all desire to be excited and nourished by opposition.  I felt that I had offended her, and that she did not love me, that perhaps she would never love me; and, without abandoning my criminal resolution to make her mine by force, I gave way to grief at the thought of her hatred of me.  I went and leaned upon a gloomy old wall which happened to be near, and, burying my face in my hands, I broke into heart-rending sobs.  My sturdy breast heaved convulsively, but tears would not bring the relief I longed for.  I could have roared in my anguish, and I had to bite my handkerchief to prevent myself from yielding to the temptation.  The weird noise of my stifled sobs attracted the attention of some one who was praying in the little chapel on the other side of the wall which I had chanced to lean against.  A Gothic window, with its stone mullions surmounted by a trefoil, was exactly on a level with my head.

“Who is there?” asked some one, and I could distinguish a pale face in the slanting rays of the moon which was just rising.

It was Edmee.  On recognising her I was about to move away, but she passed her beautiful arm between the mullions, and held me back by the collar of my jacket, saying: