“Oh, indeed!” sneered the young man, “as you are both so fond of me, how does it happen that you have given me my dismissal the very day after your interview with the cure?”

Reine, knowing Claudet’s violent disposition, and wishing to avoid trouble for the cure, thought it advisable to have recourse to evasion.

“Monsieur le Cure,” said she, “has had no part in my decision.  He has not spoken against you, and deserves no reproaches from you.”

“In that case, why do you send me away?”

“I repeat again, the comfort and peace of my father are paramount with me, and I do not intend to marry so long as he may have need of me.”

“Well,” said Claudet, persistently, “I love you, and I will wait.”

“It can not be.”

“Why?”

“Because,” replied she, sharply, “because it would be kind neither to you, nor to my father, nor to me.  Because marriages that drag along in that way are never good for anything!”

“Those are bad reasons!” he muttered, gloomily.

“Good or bad,” replied the young girl, “they appear valid to me, and I hold to them.”

“Reine,” said he, drawing near to her and looking straight into her eyes, “can you swear, by the head of your father, that you have given me the true reason for your rejecting me?”

She became embarrassed, and remained silent.

“See!” he exclaimed, “you dare not take the oath!”

“My word should suffice,” she faltered.

“No; it does not suffice.  But your silence says a great deal, I tell you!  You are too frank, Reine, and you don’t know how to lie.  I read it in your eyes, I do.  The true reason is that you do not love me.”

She shrugged her shoulders and turned away her head.

“No, you do not love me.  If you had any love for me, instead of discouraging me, you would hold out some hope to me, and advise me to have patience.  You never have loved me, confess now!”

By dint of this persistence, Reine by degrees lost her self-confidence.  She could realize how much Claudet was suffering, and she reproached herself for the torture she was inflicting upon him.  Driven into a corner, and recognizing that the avowal he was asking for was the only one that would drive him away, she hesitated no longer.

“Alas!” she murmured, lowering her eyes, “since you force me to tell you some truths that I would rather have kept from you, I confess you have guessed.  I have a sincere friendship for you, but that is all.  I have concluded that to marry a person one ought to love him differently, more than everything else in the world, and I feel that my heart is not turned altogether toward you.”

“No,” said Claudet, bitterly, “it is turned elsewhere.”

“What do you mean?  I do not understand you.”

“I mean that you love some one else.”

“That is not true,” she protested.

“You are blushing—­a proof that I have hit the nail!”