"Oh, if he only would!" sobbed Tina.
"What!" cried Sabine, in amazement.
"He says such cruel things to me," confessed the girl. "He knows, oh, he does know I never loved any man but himself; never, never any other man, nor ever will!"
Sabine's eyes opened upon new vistas of man's perfidiousness. And yet, in spite of everything, how one could love them! She felt an immense compassion toward this poor girl who had loved not wisely but so all-givingly.
"I will go to him," she said, resolutely. "I will tell him he must marry you; and I will say that if he does not, I will tell every person in Petit Espoir what a wicked thing he has done."
Tina leaped to her feet in terror. "Oh, no, no!" she pleaded. "No one must know."
Sabine understood. Not the present only, but the future must be thought of.
"And if he was forced like that to marry me, he would hate me," pursued the girl, who saw things with the pitiless clear foresight that desperation gives. "He must marry me from his own choice. Oh, if I could only make him choose; but to-night he said NO! and went away, very angry. I'm afraid he will never come back again."
"Yes, he will," said Sabine Bob. There was a grim smile on her lips; and she squared her shoulders as if to give herself courage for some dreaded ordeal. "There is a way."