“You are right to be amiable and say pleasant things to me, for I need them badly to-night.  I am sad and weary; the darkest visions come before my mind.  I think it is the storm which makes me feel so.  How doleful this thunder is!  It seems to me like an omen of misfortune.”

“It is only the fancy of your vivid imagination.  If you exerted the same will to be happy that you do to imagine troubles, our life would be perfect.  What matters the storm? and even if you do see an omen in it, what is there so very terrible?  Clouds are vapor, thunder is a sound, both are equally ephemeral; only the blue sky, which they can obscure but for a moment, is eternal.”

“Did you not hear something just now?” asked Madame de Bergenheim, as she gave a sudden start and listened eagerly.

“Nothing.  What did you think it was?”

“I feared it might be Justine who had taken it into her head to come down stairs; she is so tiresome in her attentions—­”

She arose and went to look in her chamber, which she carefully locked; a moment later, she returned and seated herself again upon the divan.

“Justine is sleeping by this time,” said Octave; “I should not have ventured if I had not seen that her light was out.”

Clemence took his hand and placed it over her heart.

“Now,” said she, “when I tell you that I am frightened, will you believe me?”

“Poor dear!” he exclaimed, as he felt her heart throbbing violently.

“You are the one who causes me these palpitations for the slightest thing.  I know that we do not run any danger, that everybody is in his own room by this time, and yet, somehow, I feel terribly frightened.  There are women, so they say, who get used to this torture, and end by being guilty and tranquil at the same time.  It is an unworthy thought, but I’ll confess that, sometimes, when I suffer so, I wish I were like them.  But it is impossible; I was not made for wrong-doing.  You can not understand this, you are a man; you love boldly, you indulge in every thought that seems sweet to you without being troubled by remorse.  And then, when you suffer, your anguish at least belongs to you, nobody has any right to ask you what is the matter.  But I, my tears even are not my own; I have often shed them on your account—­I must hide them, for he has a right to ask:  ‘Why do you weep?’ And what can I reply?”

She turned away her head to conceal the tears which she could not restrain; he saw them, and, leaning over her, he kissed them away.

“Your tears are mine!” he exclaimed, passionately; “but do not distress me by telling me that our love makes you unhappy.”

“Unhappy! oh, yes! very unhappy! and yet I would not change this sorrow for the richest joys of others.  This unhappiness is my treasure!  To be loved by you!  To think that there was a time when our love might have been legitimate!  What fatality weighs upon us, Octave?  Why did we know each other too late?  I often dream a beautiful dream—­a dream of freedom.”