Tears were trembling in Dionysia’s eyes.  She was beloved:  she thought of what she must suffer who was not beloved.

“And yet I should have been generous,” she murmured.  The countess broke out into a fierce, savage laugh.

“And the proof of it is,” said the young girl, “that I came to offer you a bargain.”

“A bargain?”

“Yes.  Save Jacques, and, by all that is sacred to me in the world, I promise I will enter a convent:  I will disappear, and you shall never hear my name any more.”

Intense astonishment seized the countess, and she looked at Dionysia with a glance full of doubt and mistrust.  Such devotion seemed to her too sublime not to conceal some snare.

“You would really do that?” she asked.

“Unhesitatingly.”

“You would make a great sacrifice for my benefit?”

“For yours?  No, madam, for Jacques’s.”

“You love him very dearly, do you?”

“I love him dearly enough to prefer his happiness to my own a thousand times over.  Even if I were buried in the depths of a convent, I should still have the consolation of knowing that he owed his rehabilitation to me; and I should suffer less in knowing that he belonged to another than that he was innocent, and yet condemned.”

But, in proportion as the young girl thus confirmed her sincerity, the brow of the countess grew darker and sterner, and passing blushes mantled her cheek.  At last she said with haughty irony,—­

“Admirable!”

“Madam!”

“You condescend to give up M. de Boiscoran.  Will that make him love me?  You know very well he will not.  You know that he loves you alone.  Heroism with such conditions is easy enough.  What have you to fear?  Buried in a convent, he will love you only all the more ardently, and he will execrate me all the more fervently.”

“He shall never know any thing of our bargain!”

“Ah!  What does that matter?  He will guess it, if you do not tell him.  No:  I know what awaits me.  I have felt it now for two years,—­this agony of seeing him becoming daily more detached from me.  What have I not done to keep him near me!  How I have stooped to meanness, to falsehood, to keep him a single day longer, perhaps a single hour!  But all was useless.  I was a burden to him.  He loved me no longer; and my love became to him a heavier load than the cannon-ball which they will fasten to his chains at the galleys.”

Dionysia shuddered.

“That is horrible!” she murmured.

“Horrible!  Yes, but true.  You look amazed.  That is because you have as yet only seen the morning dawn of your love:  wait for the dark evening, and you will understand me.  Is not the story of all of us women the same!  I have seen Jacques at my feet as you see him at yours:  the vows he swears to you, he once swore to me; and he swore them to me with the same voice, tremulous with passion, and with the same burning glances.