Suddenly she started. She saw a shadow on the garden wall. She thought she was mistaken, and leaned forward. The shadow climbed the wall and directed its way across the garden to the lighted window. Odette knew what it was. She instinctively felt that the thief, climbing into the garden at night, was the one she most dreaded to see. He crossed the garden, stepped on a stone under the window, swung himself up by his hands, and stood before her, pale and determined. They gazed at each other a moment, then,
"I love you!" he whispered.
She receded before him to the back of the room. "What are you doing here?" she cried. "Why do you persecute me with your shameful love? I am not your wife. Leave me this minute, or I will scream for help and have you driven away as a thief!"
Claude repeated, "I love you!"
She could not recede any further, she was already against the wall. Claude stood quiet; then, in his eloquent, trembling voice, fascinating her with the tender brilliancy of his eyes, he continued: "You love me! You can not deny it. You belong to me. To me alone. I take all the shame, the disgrace, upon myself, because I worship you, because I can not live without you, because you alone are my life and my happiness. Do you not see how I, too, have fought and struggled against this love that you have awakened in my heart. But all, all in vain. We must submit to our destiny. I love you."
Odette stood pale and trembling against the wall. She felt she was tottering on the brink of an abyss. She was falling, falling.
As Claude advanced, she raised her hand with a gesture of superb disdain.
"Coward!" she exclaimed.
Claude approached nearer.
"Coward!" she repeated.