She could not recede any further, she was already against the wall. Claude stood quiet; then, in his eloquent, trembling voice, fascinating her with the tender brilliancy of his eyes, he continued: "You love me! You can not deny it. You belong to me. To me alone. I take all the shame, the disgrace, upon myself, because I worship you, because I can not live without you, because you alone are my life and my happiness. Do you not see how I, too, have fought and struggled against this love that you have awakened in my heart. But all, all in vain. We must submit to our destiny. I love you." Odette stood pale and trembling against the wall. She felt she was tottering on the brink of an abyss. She was falling, falling. As Claude advanced, she raised her hand with a gesture of superb disdain. "Coward!" she exclaimed. Claude approached nearer. "Coward!" she repeated. Claude was at her side. He whispered softly again: "I love you;" and, as he opened his arms, she sank into his embrace, incapable of further resistance to the passionate love in her heart. Odette was alone in the train. She had left Dijon the day after her arrival, and was returning to Paris. As on the journey down, her brain was throbbing with thoughts of all kinds. She was seeking excuses for her crime, and the books she had studied with her father supplied her with many. Did not Darwin write, "All human beings are forced to obey their instincts?" Spencer wrote, "Will can never conquer Nature;" while Rousseau said, "Uncontrollable emotion excuses any crime." Those she revered as her masters, justified her. Why should she feel called upon to accuse herself? Her conscience could be at rest, as she had resisted this love in her heart to the utmost. She recalled one quotation after another, to show that she had, after all, nothing to reproach herself with. She acknowledged no responsibility to any God. Only to her own conscience was she responsible, and that gave her absolution. Since the world is as it is, all weak human creatures must expect to be occasionally worsted in their strife against evil. And then, she knew that this life is the end of the soul. Her father had taught her that there is no Judge to punish the wicked and reward the good, as the Bible declares. And before arriving at this total annihilation, the inevitable end of all men and things, she was going to live to enjoy life and love and be happy. She would be prudent, so that no one would suspect, and there would be nothing to fear. At this moment, she thought of her sister, and a sharp pang of agony pierced her soul as she felt that Germaine would despise her. In the midst of this total shipwreck of all that was true and good in her heart, only this affection for her sister remained; and the poor creature, born with good impulses, but corrupted by her wretched education, degraded by the teachings of the brutal materialism of the day, burst into sobs of sorrow and despair.