"Good, noble, silly child! those words may do for some spotless Gahlahad or Folko, not for me, who, a month ago, was in debt to some of the greatest blackguards in town, who have yielded to every temptation, given way to every weakness; not with the excuse of a boy new to life, but willfully and recklessly, knowing both the pleasures and their price—I, who but for your love and my father's, should now be a solitary exile, paying for my past follies with——"
"Be quiet," interrupted Valérie, with her passionate vivacity. "As different as was 'Mirabeau jugé par sa famille et Mirabeau jugé par le peuple,' are you judged by your enemies, and judged by those who love you. Granted you have had temptations, follies, errors; so has every man of high spirit and generous temper, and I value you far more coming out of a fiery furnace with so much of pure gold that the flames could not destroy, than if you were some ascetic Pharisee, who has never succumbed because he has never been tempted, and, born with no weaknesses, is born with no warmer virtues either!"
Falkenstein laughed, as he looked down at her.
"You little goose! Well, at least you have eloquence, Valérie, if not truth, on your side; and your sophistry is dear to me, as it springs out of your love."
"But it is not sophistry," she cried, with an energetic stamp of her foot. "If you will not listen to philosophy, concede, at least, to fact. Which is most worthy of my epithets—'noble and good'—Waldemar Falkenstein, or Maximillian? And yet Maximillian has been quiet and virtuous from his youth upwards, and always wins white balls from the ballot of society."
"Well, you shall have the privilege of your sex—the last word," smiled Waldemar, "more especially as the last word is on my side."
"Hark!" interrupted Valérie, quiet and subdued in a second, "the clock is striking twelve."
Silently, with her arms round his neck, they listened to the parting knell of the Old Year, stealing quietly away from its place among men. From the church towers through England tolled the twelve strokes, with a melancholy echo, telling a world that its dead past was laid in a sealed grave, and the stone of Never More was rolled to the door of the sepulchre. The Old Year was gone, with all its sins and errors, its golden gleams and midnight storms, its midsummer days of sunshine for some, its winter nights of starless gloom for others. Its last knell echoed; and then, from the old grey belfries in villages and towns, over the stirring cities and the sleeping hamlets, over the quiet meadows and stretching woodlands and grand old forest trees, rang the Silver Chimes of the New Year.
"It shall be a happy New Year to you, my darling, if my love can make it so," whispered Waldemar, as the musical bells clashed out in wild harmony under the winter stars.
She looked up into his eyes. "I must be happy, since it will be passed with you. Do you remember, Waldemar, the night I saw you first, my telling you New Year's-day was my birthday, and wondering where you and I should spend the next? I liked you strangely from the first, but how little I foresaw that my whole life was to hang on yours!"