"I had thought you more frank."
"I have my hours."
"Well, then," said Camors, "if your hours of frankness have passed, mine have begun."
"That would be compensation," she replied.
"And I will prove it to you," continued Camors.
"I shall make a fete of it," said the Marquise, throwing herself back on the sofa, as if to make herself comfortable in order to enjoy an agreeable conversation.
"I love you, Madame; and as you wish to be loved. I love you devotedly and unto death—enough to kill myself, or you!"
"That is well," said the Marquise, softly.
"But," he continued in a hoarse and constrained tone, "in loving you, in telling you of it, in trying to make you share my love, I violate basely the obligations of honor of which you know, and others of which you know not. It is a crime, as you have said. I do not try to extenuate my offence. I see it, I judge it, and I accept it. I break the last moral tie that is left me; I leave the ranks of men of honor, and I leave also the ranks of humanity. I have nothing human left except my love, nothing sacred but you; but my crime elevates itself by its magnitude. Well, I interpret it thus: I imagine two beings, equally free and strong, loving and valuing each other beyond all else, having no affection, no loyalty, no devotion, no honor, except toward each other—but possessing all for each other in a supreme degree.
"I give and consecrate absolutely to you, my person, all that I can be, or may become, on condition of an equal return, still preserving the same social conventionalities, without which we should both be miserable.