"I understand your silence, Toinette," he said at last "You're too honest to hold forth hopes to me or to yourself in which you have no faith. Hitherto you've liked me because I made no claims upon you. Now I've confessed that I want all or nothing, and therefore have suddenly become a stranger to you, an unpleasant monitor, from whom you must defend yourself. Oh! Toinette, I feel what I've risked and perhaps lost, but I couldn't help it; I owed this confession to you and to myself; for the life I have hitherto led with you would if continued consume and destroy me, and the sacrifice would not even have afforded you pleasure, you're not vain and selfish enough for that. Why aren't you, Toinette? Why are you this wondrous mystery, whose incompleteness becomes a torture to itself? If you were a coquette, who found in human sacrifices and in her triumphs compensation for all the profound joys which can only rise from a deep heart, I should almost be grateful for it; it would be easier for me to put an end to everything between us. But no, send me away, tell me nothing more, I know what your silence means, and I know that no words of mine can awake a feeling which nature has not made possible to you." He moved, as if to leave the room, but his feet refused to obey his bidding; he could only walk to the window and stand there clasping with both hands the fastening of the sash, and pressing his forehead against the pane. Just at that moment, the young girl began to speak in a low, almost timid voice: