“Good heavens!” cried Gaston, with disgust, “is it to such an unnatural mother that you sacrifice me?”

“She is my mother; that is sufficient.  I have not the right to judge her.  My duty is to remain with her, and remain I shall.”

Valentine’s manner showed such determined resolution, that Gaston saw that further prayers would be in vain.

“Alas!” he cried, as he wrung his hands with despair, “you do not love me; you have never loved me!”

“Gaston, Gaston! you do not think what you say!  Have you no mercy?”

“If you loved me,” he cried, “you could never, at this moment of separation, have the cruel courage to coldly reason and calculate.  Ah, far different is my love for you.  Without you the world is void; to lose you is to die.  What have I to live for?  Let the Rhone take back this worthless life, so miraculously saved; it is now a burden to me!”

And he rushed toward the river, determined to bury his sorrow beneath its waves; Valentine seized his arm, and held him back.

“Is this the way to show your love for me?” she asked.

Gaston was absolutely discouraged.

“What is the use of living?” he said, dejectedly.  “What is left to me now?”

“God is left to us, Gaston; and in his hands lies our future.”

As a shipwrecked man seizes a rotten plank in his desperation, so Gaston eagerly caught at the word “future,” as a beacon in the gloomy darkness surrounding him.

“Your commands shall be obeyed,” he cried with enthusiasm.  “Away with weakness!  Yes, I will live, and struggle, and triumph.  Mme. de la Verberie wants gold; well, she shall have it; in three years I will be rich, or I shall be dead.”

With clasped hands Valentine thanked Heaven for this sudden determination, which was more than she had dared hope for.

“But,” said Gaston, “before going away I wish to confide to you a sacred deposit.”

He drew from his pocket the purse of jewels, and, handing them to Valentine, added: 

“These jewels belonged to my poor mother; you, my angel, are alone worthy of wearing them.  I thought of you when I accepted them from my father.  I felt that you, as my affianced wife, were the proper person to have them.”

Valentine refused to accept them.

“Take them, my darling, as a pledge of my return.  If I do not come back within three years, you may know that I am dead, and then you must keep them as a souvenir of him who so much loved you.”

She burst into tears, and took the purse.

“And now,” said Gaston, “I have a last request to make.  Everybody believes me dead, but I cannot let my poor old father labor under this impression.  Swear to me that you will go yourself to-morrow morning, and tell him that I am still alive.”

“I will tell him, myself,” she said.

Gaston felt that he must now tear himself away before his courage failed him; each moment he was more loath to leave the only being who bound him to this world; he enveloped Valentine in a last fond embrace, and started up.