“I love him, Beaumagnan!” she cried. “The fire which burns you and devours me, too, is a love like your love; with it is mingled the idea of death and murder. Yes, I would rather kill him than know that he was another’s, or than know that he loves me no longer. But he does love me, Beaumagnan! He loves me! He loves me!” An unexpected laugh burst from Beaumagnan’s convulsed lips; his fury ended in a fit of sardonic hilarity. “He loves you, Josephine? You’re right: he loves you! He loves you as he loves all women. You’re beautiful and he desires you. Another passes and he desires her, too. And you suffer as I do the tortures of hell. Confess it!” “The tortures of hell, yes,” she said, “the tortures of hell if I believe in his falseness. But it isn’t so; and you’re trying stupidly to----” She stopped short. Beaumagnan was chuckling with such a malicious joy that she was afraid. In a low voice and in a tone of sudden pain she said: “A proof! Give me a single proof.... Not even a proof.... A mere indication.... Something that compels me to doubt.... And I’ll kill him like a dog!” She drew from her bodice a small life-preserver, a ball of lead with a whalebone handle. Her eyes grew hard. Beaumagnan answered: “What I bring you will not make you doubt; it will give you certainty.” “Speak.... Give me a name.” “Clarice d’Etigues,” he said. She shrugged her shoulders and said confidently: “I know all about that; a flirtation of no importance.” “It was important enough to him since he asked her father’s permission to marry her,” sneered Beaumagnan. “He asked what? But it’s nonsense! It’s impossible! I got to know all about it. They met one another two or three times in the country--not more.” “Better than that, they met in the young woman’s set of rooms in the Château.” “You lie!” she cried. “What you must mean is that her father is lying, for these facts were confided to me by Godfrey d’Etigues the night before last,” he said in a tone of sinister triumph. “And who did he get them from?” “From Clarice herself.” “But it’s absurd! A girl never admits a thing like that!” “I tell you he got it out of her the day before yesterday.” “But what put him on to it? They have never seen one another again,” she said. “They write to one another.” “A proof, Beaumagnan! Give me a proof this instant!” she cried with a sudden fury. “Will a letter satisfy you?” “A letter?” “Written by him to Clarice,” said Beaumagnan. “Written four months ago?” “Written four days ago.” She clutched at her bosom and paled and said between her teeth: “Have you got it?” “Here it is.” Ralph, who had listened to the last dozen sentences with extreme discomfort, trembled. He recognized the letter which he had sent from Lillebonne to Clarice d’Etigues. Josephine took it from Beaumagnan and read it in a low voice, giving every syllable its full value: