"Jacqueline!"
"What is it, Victor?"
"'The rest of us,' you say. What would you have done in my place?"
"God knows. I pretend not to know anything more."
"But 'the rest of us,' you said. You think that you at least are with
Leclerc?"
"That was the truth you taught me, Victor. But—I have not yet been tried."
"That is safe to say. What makes you speak so prudently, Jacqueline? Why do you not declare, 'Though all men deny Thee, yet will I never deny Thee'? Ah, you have not been tried! You are not yet in danger of the judgment, Jacqueline!"
"Do not speak so; you frighten me; it is not like you. How can I tell? I do not know but in this retirement, in this thought you have been compelled to, you have obtained more light than any one can have until he comes to just such a place."
"Ah, Jacqueline, why not say to me what you are thinking? Have you lost your courage? Say, 'Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.'"
"No,—oh, no! How could I say it, my poor Victor? How do you know?"