"Ah!" she said, "all is over--over! Ah! never again--! You do not know, Armand, how I loved you, how I love you. Ah! why have I done what I did? You see, I was like a madwoman. I could do nothing, I could do nothing but love you. You were my whole life, my whole faith, all that to me was noble and good. And then, suddenly, it all failed me! I have suffered so greatly! I could always hear you saying those frightful words to me. It was like a knife turning every moment in my heart. I wanted to forget you, to forget myself, to destroy everything, unhappy woman! What have I done? Why did I not come to entreat you to take me back again, to believe in me? I should have found words to convince you. Now, all is over. Do not touch me; I loathe myself." And she freed herself, and repulsed him. He perceived that she had just seen the other, her new lover. Then she went on passionately: "No! tormentor! tormentor! 'Tis your fault. Yes, 'tis you who flung me there. Had you any right to treat me so? Answer. What wrong had I done you? When had I deceived you? Why did you doubt me? No, my love. 'Tis you who are so good, so kind, whom I love so much. Forgive me! Forgive me! Grief is killing me!" Thus she lamented, revealing by the reciprocation of her alternately reviling and loving utterances the incoherence of the feelings whose tempest was shaking her. Then came relief from this frenzy, and she said: "Let me weep a little. It eases me. Do not speak to me. Presently." And he left her side. How powerless he felt in presence of this outbreak of despair. He began to pace backwards and forwards in the room, which was being invaded by the melancholy of the twilight; and Helen's sobbing had grown quite humble now, quite low, almost like that of a little girl. Instead of the frantic rebellion that there had been at first, there was a long sigh, ceaselessly broken and ceaselessly resumed, which completed the young man's perturbation. He no longer tried to comfort her, and he tried no more to contest the cruel evidence that had become fixed within him, never more to leave him. Pity for such agony, shivering horror at such irretrievable pollution, and the sight of the cruel injustice which he had committed, blended together to torture him. But what more than all beside overwhelmed him, and laid upon his heart a weight which he could feel would thenceforward be irremovable, was the feeling of his own terrible responsibility for the ruin of this woman. What! it was through knowing him and loving him that the unhappy woman had sunk so low! Helen's instinct had not deceived her; he could doubt no longer. He believed her, and in all respects. He believed that she had really loved him. He believed that before meeting him she had been pure. He believed that frenzy at an iniquitous desertion had led her so far astray as to throw her into the arms of another, and that he, Armand, was the cause, the sole cause of it all. He continued to walk up