“You—my poor Jean! you!”
He surveyed himself from head to foot, and said, with a sneering laugh:
“Really, I should not like to meet myself at dusk in the forest.”
Marie-Anne shuddered. She fancied that a threat lurked beneath these ironical words, beneath this mockery of himself.
“What a life yours must be, my poor brother! Why did you not come sooner? Now, I have you here, I shall not let you go. You will not desert me. I need protection and love so much. You will remain with me?”
“It is impossible, Marie-Anne.”
“And why?”
A fleeting crimson suffused Jean Lacheneur’s cheek; he hesitated for a moment, then:
“Because I have a right to dispose of my own life, but not of yours,” he replied. “We can no longer be anything to each other. I deny you to-day, that you may be able to deny me to-morrow. Yes, I renounce you, who are my all—the only person on earth whom I love. Your most cruel enemies have not calumniated you more foully than I——”
He paused an instant, then he added: