"If you do not understand the feeling that brought me to your sick-bed, and that has kept me beside you until to-day, to complete your cure by a mother's care, it is because you never understood my heart. This heart, Laurent," she said, putting her hand to her breast, "may be neither so proud nor so ardent as yours; but, as you yourself used often to say, it always remains in the same place. What it has loved it cannot cease to love; but, do not mistake my meaning, it is not love as you understand the word, it is not such love as you once aroused in me and as you are mad enough to expect again. Neither my passions nor my reason belong to you now. I have resumed possession of my body and my will; my confidence and my enthusiastic regard can never be restored to you. I am at liberty to bestow them upon whoever may deserve them, upon Palmer, if I choose, and you have no right to object, you who went to him one morning and said: "'Pray go and console Thérèse; you will do me a favor.'" "That is true! that is true!" cried Laurent, clasping his trembling hands; "I did say that! I had forgotten it, but I remember it now!" "Do not forget it again," said Thérèse, who resumed a gentler tone when she saw that he was calmer, "and understand, my poor child, that love is too delicate a flower to rise again when one has trampled it under foot. Think no more of it in connection with me, seek it elsewhere, if this sad experience you have had of it opens your eyes and modifies your character. You will find it on the day that you are worthy of it. As for myself, I could no longer endure your caresses, I should be degraded by them; but my sisterly and motherly affection will remain yours in spite of yourself and in spite of everything. That is something different, it is pity; I do not conceal the fact, but I tell you frankly, so that you may think no more of winning again a love by which you as well as myself would be humiliated. If you wish that this friendship, which seems an insult to you now, should become agreeable to you, you have only to deserve it. Hitherto you have had no opportunity. Now the opportunity is at hand; make the most of it, part with me without weakness or bitterness. Show me the calm, sympathetic face of a man of heart, instead of this face of a child who weeps without knowing why."