"It avails beyond all calculation to know that you love me, even if, as you say, you cannot be my wife. Madeleine, to know that you love no other,—that you love me,—that I have a claim upon you which I may not be able to urge until we meet in heaven,—is heaven on earth!"
What could Madeleine reply?
"But why, Madeleine, can you not become mine? My father would no longer object. Are you not sure of that? Do you not see how he clings to you? And my grandmother"—
"It would kill her," broke in Madeleine, "to see you the husband of one whom she detests and looks down upon as a degraded outcast. The Duke de Gramont's daughter only feels her pride in this, that she could never enter a family to which she was not welcome."
"Then her pride is stronger than her love! No, Madeleine, though your firmness has been tested and I dread it, I will not believe that you will continue so cruel as to refuse me your hand."
"Did you not say that it was happiness enough to know that,—that,"—
Madeleine had stumbled upon a sentence which it was not particularly easy to finish.
"To know that you love me! that you love me! Let me repeat the words over and over again, until my unaccustomed ears believe the sound; for they are yet incredulous! But, Madeleine, you who are truth itself, how could you have said that you loved another, even from the best of motives?"
"I did not. I said that my affections were already engaged: yet I meant you to believe, as you did, that I loved another; and the thought of the deception, for it was deception, has caused me ceaseless contrition. I do not reconcile it to my conscience; I spoke the words impulsively as the only means of forcing you to give up all claim to my hand; but I do not defend those words."