"It is she!" he exclaimed, seizing her arm and slipping it beneath his own. "Have I found you again? Is it you I am looking at, is it you I hold? By what inconceivable miracle--" "Is it really so astonishing? You know my talent for miracles." "It is true. It is the only thing I do know about you." "But what is past is nothing; there is much more to come. Now that you have fallen again in my power, you may expect the most extraordinary consequences. Your fate is sealed, your destiny is about to be fulfilled." But while she talked a growing disappointment damped the sudden joy that Léon had experienced at the first sight of her. He was bitterly wounded by the light, imperious tone she had adopted after those three years of total forgetfulness, added to her other wrongs. All the hard thoughts he had harbored of her in the long interval crowded back now upon his mind. He stopped short. "Well, madame," he said coldly, "what is it you want of me? What fresh scheme are you devising? What new way of taking me in?" "Oh, what a change three years can work in a man! Is this the tender, gentle, attentive Léon, who in this very room so fervently vowed to be wholly constant and submissive?" "Ah, if I am changed, whose is the fault, cruel one? Is it not your own? For you devoted to my undoing all the charm that has most power over the heart of man, and having betrayed my faith, you cast me off, without remorse as without pity. Did you not take a pleasure in teaching me the value of what you cheated me out of, and then leave me for three years to my regrets, to forget you as best I could?" "Léon, you are too severe. Here I am with you again. I have come back to atone for the wrong I did you, and restore to you all you pined for." "Ah, how can I put any faith in your words now? Perhaps, in a minute or two, you will once more disappear from my view, leaving no trace behind you but the pain you cause me. You are possibly already contriving some fresh ruse--" Here she interrupted him, saying in a softened voice: "No, no more ruses, no more secrets. Ah, Léon, I too have suffered. But let us forget the folly and pain that are over now. You may know and claim your wife now." "You did not want to be my wife--" "True, but I was wrong; now I have come back to surrender to your love." "Once you disdained it--a pure and lasting love that filled my heart for you. What new caprice prompts you now to claim it? Are you sure it still exists for you? Was I to foster an insane passion for an invisible woman who had forsaken me? What makes you suppose me unchanged? Why should I not in my turn reject a chain once hateful to yourself? Why should not I too now cherish my independence? To me its cost is less than it is to you."