'You love me, Jacqueline?'
'I love you!'
'Then, in the name of God that made us to love one another,' he entreated with ever-growing fervour, 'let us forget everything, leave everything, dare all for the sake of our Love. It can never be, you say ... everything can be, mignonne; for Love makes everything possible. Rank, wealth, duty, country, King—what are they but shadows? Leave them, my flower! Leave them and come to me! Love is true, love is real! Come with me, Jacqueline, and by the living God who made you as perfect as you are, by your heavenly blue eyes and your maddening smile, I swear to you that I will give you such an infinity of worship that I will make of your life one long, unceasing rapture.'
She had closed her eyes, drinking in his ardour with her very soul. Hers was one of those super-natures which, when they give, do so in the fullest measure. Being a woman, and one nurtured in self-control and acute sensitiveness, she did not, even at this blissful moment, lose complete grasp of herself; unlike the man, her passion did not carry her entirely into the realm of forgetfulness. She yielded to his kisses, knowing that, as they were the first, so they would be the last that she would ever savour in the fullness of perfect ecstasy; that parting—dreary, inevitable, woeful parting—must follow this present transient happiness. Yet, knowing all that, she would not forgo the exquisite joy that she felt in yielding, the exquisite joy, too, that she was giving him. She deliberately plucked the rich fruit of delight, even though she knew that inexorable Fate would wrench it from her even before she had tasted its sweetness to the full.
It was only when Jacqueline, suddenly waking as from a dream and disengaging herself gently from his arms, said once again, more resolutely this time: 'It can never be, Messire!' that Gilles in his turn realized what he had done. He was brought back to earth with one of those sudden blows of reawakened consciousness which leave a man stunned and bruised, in a state of quasi-hebetude. For one supreme moment of his life the gates of an earthly paradise had been opened for him and he had been granted a peep into such radiant possibilities that, dazzled and giddy with joy, he had felt within himself that sublime arrogance which makes light of every obstacle and is ready to ride rough-shod over the entire world.
But the inexorable 'It can never be!' had struck at the portals of his consciousness, and even before he had become fully sentient he saw the grim hand of Fate closing those golden gates before his eyes, and pointing sternly to the path which led down to earth, left him once more alone with his dream.
'It can never be!'
He tried to wrestle with Fate, to wrest from cruel hands that happiness which already was slipping from his grasp.
'Why not?' he cried out defiantly. Then, in a final, agonized entreaty, he murmured once more, 'Why not?'
Ah! he knew well enough why not! Fool and criminal, to have forgotten it even for this one brief instant of perfect bliss! Why not? Ye gods, were there not a thousand reasons why a penniless soldier of fortune should not dare approach a noble and rich heiress? and a thousand others why he—Gilles de Crohin—should never have spoken one word of love to this one woman, who was destined for another man—and that man his own liege lord. There was a gateless barrier made up of honour and chivalry and of an oath sworn upon the cross between his love and Jacqueline de Broyart, which in honour he should never have attempted to cross.