"This would seem to me a wretched joke, Palmer," she said, "if I did not know you to be a serious man. I prefer to believe that you do not deem me capable of accepting this name and this money which you offer me as the solution of a case of conscience. Never recur to such a suggestion; I should feel insulted." "Thérèse! Thérèse!" cried Palmer, violently, squeezing her arm until he bruised the skin, "swear to me, by the memory of the child you lost, that you no longer love Laurent; I will kneel at your feet and implore you to forgive my injustice." Thérèse withdrew her wounded arm, and gazed at him in silence. She was outraged to the very bottom of her soul that he should exact such an oath from her, and his words seemed to her even more cruel and brutal than the physical pain she had undergone. "My child," she cried, stifling her sobs, "I swear to you, to you who are in heaven, that no man shall ever debase your poor mother again!" She rose, went to her room, and locked herself in. She felt so entirely innocent with respect to Palmer, that she could not endure the idea of descending to self-justification like a guilty woman. Moreover, she anticipated a horrible future with a man who could brood so long over a deep-rooted jealousy, and who, after he had twice provoked what he thought to be a serious danger for her, attributed his own imprudence to her as a crime. She thought of her mother's ghastly life with a husband who was jealous of the past, and she said to herself, justly enough, that, after she had had the misfortune to be subjected to a passion like Laurent's, she had been insane to believe in the possibility of happiness with another man. Palmer had a reserve store of good sense and pride which did not allow him to hope to make Thérèse happy after such a scene as had just occurred. He felt that his jealousy would never be cured, and he persisted in believing that it was well-founded. He wrote to Thérèse: