St. Just sprang to his feet, and put his hands before his face.
"His mistress!" he exclaimed. "'Twas this I feared. Oh, infamy!" And his voice sounded like a despairing wail. "And he knew that you were mine. Twice I have saved his life, and he robs me of my mistress."
There was silence for a space, she bending forward with her eyes still fixed upon the floor, her expression that of abject hopelessness. He took his hands from before his eyes, and his face was piteous to behold, so changed it was. He spoke again.
"And for this woman I would have freely sacrificed my life. For her I have sacrificed—and uselessly—what is dearer far, my honor as a soldier, my whole career."
And, without a word of farewell to the broken woman, he turned his face from her and passed through the curtains; then scarcely seeing which way he was going, he stumbled down the staircase and, somehow, gained the courtyard, where he staggered to a seat.
All this time, she had not dared to raise her eyes, but she knew that he was gone, for she heard his gradually retreating footsteps on the stairs. When they were no longer audible, she looked up and gazed around the room despairingly. Then, with a piercing cry of "Henri!" she fell forward fainting to the floor.
He heard the cry, but for the time was too full of his own grief to heed it; instead he kept repeating to himself the words that seemed to have stamped themselves upon his brain, "Buonaparte's mistress!" and then these others, "A dishonored soldier, a deserter!"
In his agony, he laid his face within his hands and burst into tears.
The tears of a woman in mortal agony are piteous to behold, but a strong man so affected is a sight over which one would fain draw the veil.
But grief so violent, as was St. Just's, cannot be long continued without one of two things occurring—either the sufferer overcomes it, or it overcomes the sufferer. In this case the latter happened; St. Just fell forward to the ground, unconscious.