"Come, Emile," she said, when he was at her side. "We haven't an instant to lose. My father is in the field close by. I saw you and recognized you just as you started down this road, and I left him without saying anything while he was talking with the mowers. I have a letter to show you, a letter from Monsieur Cardonnet: but it is too dark for you to read it, so I will repeat it to you almost word for word. I know it by heart."
When she had repeated the substance of the letter, she continued:
"Now, tell me what this means? I think that I understand it, but I must know surely from you."
"O Gilberte!" cried Emile, "I hadn't the courage to come and tell you; but it was God's will that I should meet you and that my fate should be decided by you. Tell me, my Gilberte, my first and last love, do you know why I love you?"
"Apparently," replied Gilberte, abandoning her hand to him, which he pressed against his lips, "it was because you divined in me a heart created to assist you."
"Very good; and can you tell me, my only love, my only treasure on this earth, why your heart gave itself to me?"
"Yes, I can tell you, my dear; because you seemed to me, from the very first day, noble, generous, simple-hearted, humane, in a single word, good, which to my mind is the noblest quality a man can have."
"But there is a passive goodness which in some sort excludes nobility and generosity of sentiment, a yielding weakness, which may be a charming characteristic, but which, under difficult circumstances, compromises with duty and betrays the interests of mankind generally to spare itself and one or two others a little suffering?"
"I understand that, but I do not call weakness and fear goodness. To my mind there is no true goodness without courage, dignity and, above all, devotion to duty. If I esteem you to the point of saying to you, without suspicion and without shame, that I love you, Emile, it is because I know that you are great in heart and mind; it is because you pity the unfortunate and think only of assisting them, because you despise nobody, because you suffer when others suffer, because you would gladly give everything that belongs to you, even your blood, to relieve the poor and the abandoned. That is what I understood about you as soon as you talked before me and with me; and that is why I said to myself: This heart answers mine; these noble thoughts exalt my soul and confirm me in all that I have thought; I detect in this mind, which impresses me and charms me, a light which I am compelled to follow and which guides me toward God himself. That is why, Emile, I felt neither terror nor remorse in yielding to the inclination to love you. It seemed to me that I was performing a duty; and I have not changed my opinion after reading your father's mocking words concerning you."
"Dear Gilberte, you know my heart and my thought; but your adorable goodness, your divine affection ascribe to me as a great merit sentiments which seem to me so natural and so forced upon men by the instinct God has implanted in them, that I should blush not to have them. And yet these sentiments, which must appear in the same light to you, since you yourself entertain them with such innocence and simplicity, are spurned by many people and derided as dangerous errors. There are some who hate and despise them because they haven't them. There are others who, by a strange anomaly, have them to a certain extent, but cannot tolerate the logical deduction from them and their inevitable consequences. Heaven help me! I fear that I cannot explain myself clearly."