Raymon's forehead was wet with cold perspiration. If the words _you who never knew her_ had delivered him from painful anxiety, this appeal to his victim's memory, in Indiana's innocent mouth, terrified him with a superstitious terror. Sorely distressed, he rose and walked feverishly to a window and leaned on the sill to breathe the fresh air. Indiana remained in her chair, silent and deeply moved. She felt a sort of secret joy on seeing Raymon weep like a child and display the weakness of a woman. "He is naturally kind," she murmured to herself; "he is fond of me; his heart is warm and generous. He did wrong, but his repentance expiates his fault, and I ought to have forgiven him sooner." She gazed at him with a softened expression; her confidence in him had returned. She mistook the remorse of the guilty man for the repentance of love. "Do not weep any more," she said, rising and walking up to him; "it was I who killed her; I alone am guilty. This remorse will sadden my whole life. I gave way to an impulse of suspicion and anger; I humiliated her, wounded her to the heart. I vented upon her all my spleen against you; it was you alone who had offended me, and I punished my poor friend for it. I was very hard to her!" "And to me," said Raymon, suddenly forgetting the past to think only of the present. Madame Delmare blushed. "I should not perhaps have reproached you for the cruel loss I sustained on that awful night," she said; "but I cannot forget the imprudence of your conduct toward me. The lack of delicacy in your romantic and culpable project wounded me very deeply. I believed then that you loved me!--and you did not even respect me!" Raymon recovered his strength, his determination, his love, his hopes; the sinister presentiment, which had made his blood run cold, vanished like a nightmare. He awoke once more, young, ardent, overflowing with desire, with passion, and with hopes for the future. "I am guilty if you hate me," he said, vehemently, throwing himself at her feet; "but, if you love me, I am not guilty--I never have been. Tell me, Indiana, do you love me?" "Do you deserve it?" she asked. "If, in order to deserve it," said Raymon, "I must love you to adoration--" "Listen to me," she said, abandoning her hands to him and fastening upon him her great eyes, swimming in tears, wherein a sombre flame gleamed at intervals. "Do you know what it is to love a woman like me? No, you do not know. You thought that it was merely a matter of gratifying the caprice of a day. You judged my heart by all the surfeited hearts over which you have hitherto exerted your ephemeral domination. You do not know that I have never loved as yet and that I will not give my untouched virgin heart in exchange for a ruined, withered heart, my enthusiastic love for a lukewarm love, my whole life for one brief day!"