"_No!_" he went on, rising and beginning to walk about the room with an abrupt step, the sound of which trampled upon the poor woman's heart; "I cannot formulate that--I cannot--well, yes!" he said, stopping in front of her; "I was told that you were the mistress of Count de la Croix-Firmin at Trouville, that it was the talk of the place, that some young men had seen you entering his room and kissing him, that he himself had boasted of having been your lover. That is what I was told, and told with such persistence that for a moment I was maddened by the calumny, and then I felt the morbid longing to see you, to hear you only declare to me that it is not true. Answer, my love, that you forgive me for having doubted you, that you love me, that you have loved me, that all this is nothing but a hateful lie." He had thrown himself at her feet as he said these words; he took her hands, her arms, her waist; he hung to her as, when drowning, he would have caught at the body of one who had leapt into the water to save him. "It is true that I love you," she replied, in a scarcely audible voice. "And all the rest is a lie?" he besought her distractedly. Ah! he would have given his life at that moment for a word from those lips. But the lips remained mute, and upon the woman's pale cheeks slow, long tears began to flow, without sob or sigh, as though it had been her soul that was weeping thus. Did not such a silence and such tears, at such a moment, form the clearest, the most cruel, of all replies? "It is true, then?" he asked again. And as she continued silent: "But answer, answer, answer," he went on, with a frightful violence, which wrung from those lips--at the corners of which the slow tears were still flowing--a "Yes" so feeble that he could scarcely hear it; and yet he was destined to hear it, for ever! He leaped up, and cast his eyes wildly around him. Some weapons hung on the walls. A temptation seized upon the soldier's son to mangle this woman with one of those shining blades; and so strong was it that he recoiled. He looked again at that face, upon which the same tears were flowing freely. He uttered that "Ah!" of agony--that cry, as of an animal wounded unto death, which is drawn forth by a sight of horror; and as though he were afraid of everything--of the sight before him--of the walls--of this woman--of himself--he fled from the room and the house, bare-headed and with soul distraught. He had been strong enough to feel that in five minutes he would have become a murderer.