"Believe me, I do not want to make you feel your loss more keenly by what I must now admit; but, Carmontelle, the reparation I must make to Ma'amselle Marie is not such that I need money to condone the sacrifice. I—I love her, although I have never dared own the truth to my own heart until this hour."
Through the breast of the elder man there went a pang of jealous pain, as he repeated, hoarsely:
"You love her?"
"Yes, since the first night I met her. But I scarcely dared own the truth to my own heart. What had I, the poor journalist, to do with that fair creature, whose beauty in itself was a rich dower? But now, when fate itself has given her to me, I can only rejoice."
"Rejoice, yes, that is best—much best," Carmontelle said, after a long, constrained pause. "It is best," he repeated again, more firmly.
"It was fate itself that gave her to me," Van Zandt said, solemnly; and in a burst of emotion he made clear the mystery of the wounded arm that had so puzzled his friend.
"She was dying, and I gave my own blood to save her life. It is my own life that leaps through her veins, that sends the light to her eyes, the color to her cheek. But it is my secret. She must never know."
"No, never; but by that noble sacrifice her life belongs to you, and I can be unselfish enough, Van Zandt, in my own disappointment, to wish that you may win her whole young heart!" Carmontelle exclaimed, lifted out of all selfish regrets by this strange revelation.
And then they planned it all out before Van Zandt lay down to rest, taking Marie's consent for granted—Marie, the simple, ignorant girl who could not have told you to save her life what those two words, love and marriage, meant.