“But you will be imprisoned!”
“I have had this hour of freedom. The rest is nothing.”
“They will put you to death.”
“Without you, I do not care to live.”
“Mon Dieu, what shall I do?”
“If you could say—if you could let me believe—it will be but for a short time—that, were the circumstances other than they are, you might perhaps have cared for me, it will lighten the hours and give me something sweet to dwell upon. It will make me indifferent to any fate.”
“Monsieur—I—I—” she faltered, her face aflame. She buried it in her hands.
I sank on my knee and seized the hem of her gown. Then I felt her hands upon my head. I rose to my feet. I don’t know how or why, but I swept her to my breast in an embrace. Her lips met mine.
“No more,” she said, pushing me away. “I have gone too far already. You must not go to him now.”
“I am in heaven already, Mademoiselle, and death cannot alter the fact that you return my love.”