And she seemed to sink into a deep fit of thought, while he, almost as though incredulous, still stood as though he were listening to her. In a moment, she looked up again and repeated in a tone of firm conviction: “Yes--I promise you.” She pressed his hand and turned away, casting upon him a smile so sweet and yet so sorrowful that I wondered how this woman could speak to a man of future happiness. She brushed past me without seeing me. She passed with her perfume and I no longer smelled the laurel bushes behind which I was hidden. M. Darzac remained standing in the same spot, looking after her. Suddenly he said aloud with a violence which startled me: “Yes, happiness must come! It must!” Assuredly, he was at the end of his patience. And before withdrawing in his turn, he made a gesture of protest--against fate, it seemed to me--a gesture of defiance to destiny--a gesture which snatched the Lady in Black through the space which divided them and caught her to his breast and held her there. He had scarcely made this gesture when my thought took form--my thought which had been wandering about Larsan stopped at Darzac. Oh, how well I remember that instant! The fancy was gone in a moment, but as I beheld gesture of defiance and rapture, I dared to say to myself, “If HE should be Larsan!” And in looking back to the depths of my memory, I realize now that my thought was even stronger than that. To the gesture of this man, my mind answered with the cry, “This is Larsan!” I was white with terror and when I saw Robert Darzac coming in my direction, I could not refrain from a movement which revealed my presence while I was trying to conceal it. He saw me and recognized me, and, grasping me by the arm, he exclaimed: “You were there, Sainclair: you were watching. We are all watching, my friend. And you heard what she said. Sainclair, her grief is too great. I can bear no more. We would have been so happy. She began to believe that misfortune had forgotten her when that man reappeared. Then all was finished; she had no longer strength to desire love or to feel it. She is bowed down by destiny. She imagines that she is to be pursued by eternal punishment. It was necessary for the frightful tragedy of last night to prove to me that this woman did love me--once. Yes, for one moment, all her fears were for me--and I, alas, have blood on my hands only because of her. Now she has returned to her old indifference. She cares no longer--her only desire is that the old man shall be kept in ignorance.”