I love you too much, Joyzelle, to do him any harm, so long as you love him.... He has therefore nothing to fear.... Do you not fear me either. I am not here to take advantage of the darkness and surprise your heart. I had another object.... Listen to me, Joyzelle; it is no longer the rival or the unhappy lover that speaks to you; it is a prudent and anxious father.... Before he came who conquered you, as never man in this world conquered woman, I had, I confess, caught a glimpse of a happiness which it is idle to pursue in the decline of years.... To-day I retire, sadly, but in good faith.... I know how much you love the poor unconscious being whom malevolent chance has placed upon your road.... And do not mistake me: I am speaking of him now without hatred or envy, but not without dismay, when I think of the heart-rending days which he is preparing for you.... That is why I insist on enlightening you as regards him, at the risk of displeasing you.... I have no other care than to make you turn away from an unhappy love in which nothing but tears and disillusion awaits you.... I have no hope for myself.... I do not ask you to love me in his stead.... You have shown me fully that that is impossible.... I desire only that you will cease to love him: that is all that I implore of the kindness of fate; and fate to-night hears my prayer.... JOYZELLE. How?... MERLIN. The proof is grave and sad; I would have liked to spare you.... But you know better than I that there are salutary sufferings, before which it is shameful to fly.... A sign will be enough to overturn a world.... A little movement of that neck which as yet bends without anxiety, a single glance of those eyes, too confident and too full of innocence, will destroy before my sight the most beautiful thing that love has created in a woman's heart.... And yet, it must be.... It is right, it is well that this thing should to-day be lost in tears which it may yet be possible to wipe away; for later it would have had to sink in sorrows which nothing could have consoled.... JOYZELLE. What do you mean?... MERLIN. That, at this very moment, when all that is spotless and true, limpid and ardent in your heart, when all the transparent virtues of your soul, all the faithfulness, all the loyalty and all the innocence of your virgin blood mount up towards him whom you had selected to make of him the purest, the happiest of men, he is there, behind us, at two steps from this bank, sheltered by those leaves which he thinks impenetrable, in the arms of the woman with whom, the other day, as you yourself saw, he profaned the marvellous love which you have given him!... JOYZELLE. No. MERLIN. Why do you say no, without looking?... JOYZELLE. Because he is myself.... MERLIN. I do not ask you to believe my words: I simply ask you to turn your head.... JOYZELLE. No. MERLIN. Do you hear the murmur of their voices mingling and the song of kisses answering kisses?... JOYZELLE. No. MERLIN.