He had placed her on the stone bench, bewildered and unresisting, and had seated himself by her side. The fragile figure, shivering still, even in the mild atmosphere of the spring night, was sustained by his encircling arm. He felt that she was his, irrevocably and entirely--given to him by the Providence which would have seemed to have abandoned her, but for the love it had implanted for her in this one faithful heart. His tone had all the pleading tenderness of a lover's, but it had something more--an authority, a sense of possession. "Providence sent me here to save you," he said, with that gentle yet authoritative tone; "I am your providence, am I not, dearest? Fate made me love you--fondly, hopelessly, as I thought. Yesterday you seemed as far away from me as those pale stars, shining up yonder--as incomprehensible as that faint silvery mist above the rising moon--and to-night you are my own." He knew not what ties might be broken by this act. He had indeed a vague consciousness that the step which he was now taking would cause a lifelong breach between himself and his father. But the time had gone by in which he could count the cost. "Let me go back, M. Lenoble," the Englishwoman said presently. The faintness of terror was passing away, and she spoke almost calmly. "Let me go back to the house. It is you that have saved me from a dreadful sin. I promise you that I will not again think of committing that deadly sin. I will wait for the end to come. Let me go, my kind friend. Ah, no, no; do not detain me! Forget that you have ever known me." "That is not in my power. I will take you back to the Pension Magnotte directly; but you must first promise to be my wife." "Your wife! O, no, no, no! That is impossible." "Because you do not love me," said Gustave, with mournful gravity. "Because I am not worthy of you." Humiliation and self-reproach unspeakable were conveyed in those few words. "You are worth all the stars to me. If I had them in my hands, those lamps shining up there, I would throw them away, to hold you," said the student passionately. "You cannot understand my love, perhaps. I seem a stranger to you, and all I say sounds wild and foolish. My love, it is true as the heaven above us--true as life or death--death that was so near you just now. I have loved you ever since that bleak March morning on which I saw you sitting under the leafless trees yonder. You held me from that moment. I was subjugated--possessed--yours at once and for ever. I would not confess even to myself that my heart had resigned itself to you; but I know now that it was so from the first. Is there any hope that you will ever pay me back one tithe of my love?" "You love me," the Englishwoman repeated slowly, as if the words were almost beyond her comprehension,--"you love _me_, a creature so lost, so friendless! Ah, but you do not know my wretched story!" "I do not ask to know it. I only ask one question--will you be my wife?"