"Yes," replied the young woman.
"You see I was right," replied the Prince. "Come," he said, with a peculiar mixture of pity and abruptness, "look into your heart. You have had eight days in which to make up your mind. Do you still love her?"
"I love her dearly," replied Verdier, after a short silence.
"Another good man ruined," said the Prince, shrugging his shoulders. He accompanied the brutal triviality of his remark with a deep sigh which took away its cynicism.
"So," he continued, "the life that we lead together, a life that is so full, so noble, so free, does not suffice now: our manly joy and the proud happiness in discovering that we have so often felt together, that has rewarded us largely, royally, and fully so often, is no longer enough for you? You want to re-enter that hideous society that I have taught you to judge at its true value? You wish to marry, to leave this refuge, leave science, leave your master and your friend?"
"But, Your Highness," interrupted Verdier, "can I not be married and continue to work with you?"
"With that woman? Never!" replied the Archduke, in a tone of passionate energy. His anger increased; and he repeated: "Never—Let us separate, since it has come to that. But let us separate without hypocrisy, without falsehood, in a manner that is really worthy of what we have been for each other. You know well enough that the first condition of your marriage with that girl will be that you make known to her brigand of an uncle, this secret," and he touched with his hand one of the accumulators standing on the table. "Don't tell me that you would refuse to make it known, because the invention belongs to us both. I give you my part. Do you hear? I give it to you. You would certainly betray me sooner or later, either through weakness or through that cowardly love that I see in your heart. I want to spare you that remorse. Marry that woman. Sell our invention to that business man. Sell him the result of our research. I give you full authority, but I shall never see you again. For the secret that you are selling to him is, believe me, Science. Follow your own will, but it shall at any rate not be said that you did not know what you were doing, or that in doing it you participated in all the ignominy of this age: that you lent aid to that vast collective crime which idiots call civilization. You will continue to work. You will still have genius, and from this discovery and others that you will make, your new master will secure millions and millions. Those millions will signify an abject luxury and viciousness on high, and a heap of misery and human slavery below. How well I judged that girl from the first day! Behold her work! She appeared and you have not been able to hold firm. And against what? Against smiles and looks which would have been directed at others if you had not been there, which would have been for the first imbecile who had turned up with a manly figure and a pair of mustaches!—Against toilet, against dresses, and against riches. Let me continue for a moment. In an hour you will be near her, and you can laugh with her at your old master, your old friend, as much as you like. You do not know what it is to have a friend like me, one who loves you as I do. You will understand it some day. You will realize it when you have measured the difference between this feeling that you are leaving one side, between our manly communion of ideas, our heroic intimacy of thought, and that which you now prefer, the life which you are about to commence—an idle, degraded, poisoned life!
"Good-by, Verdier," and this strange person, in saying the word good-by, spoke with a tone of infinite sadness and bitterness. "I read in your eyes that you will marry that girl, and since it is to be so, go. I prefer never to see you again. Make a fortune with the knowledge that you have secured here. You would certainly have learned it elsewhere, so we are quits. The happiest hours of my life for years have been due to you, and I forgive you on that account. But I tell you again, I see you for the last time. Everything is over between you and me.
"As for you, madame," he continued, casting a glance of bitter hatred at Ely, "I promise you I will discover some means of punishing you."