“He is my confessor.”
“Does he know that I love you?”
“M. de Montriveau, you cannot claim, I think, to penetrate the secrets of the confessional?”
“Does that man know all about our quarrels and my love for you?”
“That man, monsieur; say God!”
“God again! I ought to be alone in your heart. But leave God alone where He is, for the love of God and me. Madame, you shall not go to confession again, or——”
“Or?” she repeated sweetly.
“Or I will never come back here.”
“Then go, Armand. Good-bye, good-bye forever.”
She rose and went to her boudoir without so much as a glance at Armand, as he stood with his hand on the back of a chair. How long he stood there motionless he himself never knew. The soul within has the mysterious power of expanding as of contracting space.