“‘It is only a joke.’

“‘Then,’ she said, ’let us not say any thing more about it.  If you should ever come to that, you would soon see what I would do.’

“I did not insist; but that look remained long in my memory, and made me feel that I was far more closely bound than I had thought.  From that day it became my fixed idea to break with her.”

“Well, you ought to have made an end of it,” said Magloire.

Jacques de Boiscoran shook his head.

“That is easily said,” he replied.  “I tried it; but I could not do it.  Ten times I went to her, determined to say, ‘Let us part;’ and ten times, at the last moment, my courage failed me.  She irritated me.  I almost began to hate her; but I could not forget how much I had loved her, and how much she had risked for my sake.  Then—­why should I not confess it?—­I was afraid of her.

“This inflexible character, which I had so much admired, terrified me; and I shuddered, seized with vague and sombre apprehensions, when I thought what she was capable of doing.  I was thus in the utmost perplexity, when my mother spoke to me of a match which she had long hoped for.  This might be the pretext which I had so far failed to find.  At all events, I asked for time to consider; and, the first time I saw the countess again, I gathered all my courage, and said to her,—­

“‘Do you know what has happened?  My mother wants me to marry.’

“She turned as pale as death; and looking me fixedly in the eyes, as if wanting to read my innermost thoughts, she asked,—­

“‘And you, what do you want?’

“‘I,’ I replied with a forced laugh,—­’I want nothing just now.  But the thing will have to be done sooner or later.  A man must have a home, affections which the world acknowledges’—­

“‘And I,’ she broke in; ‘what am I to you?’

“‘You,’ I exclaimed, ’you, Genevieve!  I love you with all the strength of my heart.  But we are separated by a gulf:  you are married.’

“She was still looking at me fixedly.

“‘In other words,’ she said, ’you have loved me as a pastime.  I have been the amusement of your youth, the poetry of twenty years, that love-romance which every man wants to have.  But you are becoming serious; you want sober affections, and you leave me.  Well, be it so.  But what is to become of me when you are married?’

“I was suffering terribly.

“‘You have your husband,’ I stammered, ’your children’—­

“She stopped me.

“‘Yes,’ she said.  ’I shall go back go live at Valpinson, in that country full of associations, where every place recalls a rendezvous.  I shall live with my husband, whom I have betrayed; with daughters, one of whom—­That cannot be, Jacques.’

“I had a fit of courage.

“‘Still,’ I said, ‘I may have to marry.  What would you do?’

“‘Oh! very little,’ she replied.  ’I should hand all your letters to Count Claudieuse.’”