"Yes."
"And you see him? You have seen him perhaps this very day?"
"Yes."
"And he loves you,—loves you as much as ever?"
Madeleine silently bowed her head, but the radiant light that overspread her countenance answered more unmistakably than the affirmative action.
"Ah, Madeleine, can you think, can you believe that his love equals mine? You do not answer; speak, I implore you! Do you believe that he has loved you as I love you?"
Madeleine felt impelled to reply because she deemed it best for Maurice to be confirmed in his error. In a low, tremulous tone, and with her eyes swimming in the soft lustre of a half-formed tear, she murmured, "Yes."
"No! no! It cannot be!" burst forth Maurice. "No woman was ever loved twice with such absorbing devotion. You cannot be to him what you are to me! You cannot have saved him from all the perils from which you have saved me! Ah, Madeleine, since you have been selected to fill the place of a guardian angel to me, why, why was my love rejected? Why did another rob me of your heart? Why were you willing to unite your fate to his and not to mine?"
"Maurice," said Madeleine, regaining some degree of composure, "I shall never forget the noble offer you made me when I was a desolate outcast; I shall never forget the joy it gave me,—the gratitude it caused me,—the good it did me, at the very moment when I was forced, ay forced to reject that offer. But had there been no other barrier could I have consented to become a burden to you? I,—poor and friendless,—could I have consented to draw down the anger of your family upon you? Could I have consented to separate you from them?—to make a lasting feud between you? Say, Maurice, would you have had me do this?"
"I would have had you leave me still a hope upon which I could have existed, until I had fitted myself to enter an honorable profession; until I had a prospect of earning an independence through that profession; until I had the right to say to you (as I now might, were you but mine in heart), Madeleine, I have waited patiently, and toiled earnestly,—will you share my narrow means, my almost poverty? Will you be my wife? We might have been exiles, so to speak, for we should perhaps have been cast off by our own kindred, and might never have returned to our native land; but your presence would have made this new country,—this young Hercules of lands,—this land full of sinews, bones and muscle, not yet clothed with rounded symmetry of outward form, but fresh and strong and teeming with promise, a true home to us. Its vast, ever-growing mind would have given new expansion to our own mental faculties. We should have grown spiritually, and reached nobler heights together. If we had griefs to endure, grief itself would have been sweet to me if we drank it from the same cup. All this might have been, Madeleine, if you had loved me as I love you."