All
my strength and all my pride is centred in that fact. Is not that
sufficient? It certainly makes one great and good to be able to say that
one really loves."
She continued with sighs, and in broken phrases, to confess everything
to him, in an unaffected outpouring of ardent feeling. It was a true
affection that thus acknowledged itself. She dared to do so because she
was innocent and pure. Little by little she raised her head.
"We love each other, Monseigneur. Without doubt he has already told
you how all this came to pass. As for me, I have often asked myself the
question without being able to reply to it. But we love each other, and
if it is a crime to do so, pardon it, I beseech you, for it came from
afar, from everything in short that surrounded us. When I realised that
I loved him, it was already too late to prevent it. Now, is it possible
to be angry on that account? You can keep him with you, make him marry
some other person, but you cannot prevent him from giving me his heart.
He will die without me, as I shall if obliged to part from him. When
he is not by my side I feel that he is really near me, and that we will
never be entirely separated, since we carry each other's life with us.
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