He returned her embrace fondly once, but the next instant he removed her almost forcibly from his breast, and held her at arm's length. "No, no!" he exclaimed, "not thus, not thus! If at all, honestly, openly, holily, in the face of day! May my soul perish, ere cause come through me why you should ever blush to show your front aloft among the purest and the proudest. No, no, not thus, my own Melanie!" The girl burst into a paroxysm of tears and sobbing, through which she hardly could contrive to make her interrupted and faultering words audible. "If not now," she said at length, "it will never be. For, hear me, Raoul, and pity me, to-morrow they are about to drag me to Paris." The lover mused for several moments very deeply, and then replied, "Listen to me, Melanie. If you are in earnest, if you are true, and can be firm, there may yet be happiness in store for us, and that very shortly." "Do you doubt me, Raoul?" "I do not doubt you, Melanie. But ever as in my own wildest rapture, even to gain my own extremest bliss, I would not do aught that could possibly cast one shadow on your pure renown, so, mark me, would I not take you to my heart were there one spot, though it were but as a speck in the all-glorious sun, upon the brightness of your purity." "I believe you, Raoul. I feel, I know that my honor, that my purity is all in all to you. "I would die a thousand deaths," he made answer, "ere even a false report should fall on it, to mar its virgin whiteness. Marvel not then that I ask as much of you." "Ask anything, St. Renan. It _is_ granted." "In France we can hope for nothing. But there are other lands than France. We must fly; and thanks to these documents which you have wrung from them, and the proofs which I can easily obtain, this cursed marriage can be set aside, and then, in honor and in truth you can be mine, mine own Melanie." "God grant it so, Raoul." "It shall be so, beloved. Be you but firm, and it may be done right speedily. I will sell the estates of St. Renan--by a good chance, supposing me dead, the Lord of Yrvilliac was in treaty for it with my uncle. That can be arranged forthwith. Conduct yourself according to your wont, cool and as distant as may be with this villain of Ploermel; avoid above all things to let your father see that you are buoyed by any hope, or moved by any passion. Treat the king with deliberate scorn, if he approach you over boldly. Beware how you eat or drink in his company, for he is capable of all things, even of drugging you into insensibility, and here," he added, taking a small poniard, of exquisite workmanship, with a gold hilt and scabbard, from his girdle, and giving it to her, "wear _this_ at all times, and if he dare attempt violence, were he thrice a king, _use it_!"