He gazed at her for a moment with an expression of deepest sadness, for all that was passing in the young girl's heart was suddenly revealed, as if he had read even to her latest thought. He stepped up to her.
"You have ceased to care for France, Geneviève; confess it is so. You fly from the air breathed here, and not without the greatest reluctance will you even approach the window."
"Alas!" said Geneviève, "I know I cannot conceal my thoughts from you, Maurice; you have divined rightly."
"It is nevertheless a fine country," said the young man; "life is here important, and well occupied now. This bustling activity of the Tribune, the clubs, the conspiracies, renders sweeter the hours spent by our own fireside. One loves it the more ardently, it may be, from the fear of not being able to love it on the morrow, for on the morrow one may have ceased to exist."
Geneviève shook her head. "An ungrateful country to serve," said she.
"Why so?"
"Yes; you who have labored so much for the cause of liberty, are you not to-day more than half suspected?"
"But you, dear Geneviève," said Maurice, with a look replete with tenderness, "you a sworn enemy to this liberty,—you who have done so much against it! You yet sleep, peaceable and inviolate, beneath the roof of a Republican; and there, you see, is my recompense."
"Yes," said Geneviève, "but that cannot last long; that which is wrong cannot endure."