"You love me?"
"Wildly, madly!"
"He loves me! He dares to say that he loves me!" she said, with indignation.
"This morning the secret of my soul was twenty times on my lips; but when I saw how unhappy you were—when I listened to your confession—"
"Well!"
"Well! I believed, yes, I believed, that it was love for another, a love that was not returned, scorned perhaps, and that such unrequited love was the cause of all the grief which you said was without cause and unreasonable."
"You believed that,—you!" and she raised her eyes to heaven.
"Yes, I believed it; and then I became wild with hate and despair, for every one of your confessions was a wound, an insult, an agony to me,—to me who loved you so fondly."
"You could believe that,—you!" repeated Marguerite, gazing on me with painful emotion, while two tears trickled slowly down her pale cheeks.
"Yes, and I believe it still."