Her green eyes were shining in the dusk. He heard the beating of her heart. Never had he experienced so profound a joy. She put her arms round his neck and said in the tenderest accents: “I love you. That is my great and only secret, Ralph. The other does not interest me. But this secret is all my life—all my soul! I have loved you from the beginning, without knowing you, even before I saw your face. I loved you in the darkness, and it was because of that that I detested you. Yes: I was ashamed. It was your lips that took me, on the road to Beaucourt. They stirred in me something I had never known and which frightened me. So much pleasure, so much happiness, on that horrible night—from a man I did not know! To the very depths of my being, I felt the delightful and revolting feeling that I belonged to you, and that you had only to will it to make me your slave. If I fled from you, it was because of that, Ralph—not because I hated you, but because I loved you too dearly and was afraid of you. I was troubled and confused. I wished at any cost never to see you again and yet I only thought of seeing you again. If I was able to endure the horror of that night and all the abominable tortures which followed it, it was because of you—because of you from whom I fled who always came again at the hour of danger. I hated you for it with all my heart; and every time I felt myself yet more yours. Ralph, Ralph, clasp me tightly, Ralph, I love you.” He clasped her to him with a dolorous passion. In his heart he had never doubted the existence of this love. It had been revealed to him by the ardor of a first kiss; and at every one of their meetings, it had displayed itself in a fear of which he had divined the profound cause. But he was afraid even of the happiness he was feeling. The tender words of the young girl, the caress of her fresh breath intoxicated him. The dauntless will to fight was weakening in him. She had divined this lassitude in the depths of his being, and drew him yet closer to her. “Let us resign ourselves, Ralph,” she said. “Let us accept the inevitable. I do not fear death with you. But I want it to surprise me in your arms—my mouth on your mouth, Ralph. Life can never give us greater happiness.” Her two arms enlaced him like a collar from which he could no longer free himself. Little by little her lips drew nearer and nearer to his. He resisted, however. To kiss those lips which offered themselves to him, was to accept defeat and, as she said, resign himself to the inevitable. But he would not. All his nature rose in revolt against such cowardice. But Aurelie implored him, stammering the words which weaken and disarm. “I love you—do not refuse that which should be—I love you—I love you.”