"Forget my faults and the wrong they have caused you. I want you to forgive me everything up to the present minute--proudly hurl the past into dead eternity and make all that ought not to have been like what never was. Lastly, I crave for our departure for a change of sun and air and sky, so that the woman I mean to become henceforward should never be reminded for a single instant of the wretch that I was. Oh, let us live no more but for each other--you entirely mine as I entirely your own!" Almost carried away by the eloquent outburst, Clemenceau had but one thought to cling to and hold him in the flood. His work of patriotism! "Your work? well, there should be no work where love presides! after all," she continued, rising and venturing to slide her arms upon his shoulders, "you only toiled because you believed I did not love you. You tried to become celebrated only because you were not happy. You were a student when I opened the book of love to you and the little I showed you to read gave you the yearning for more. Labor came after love. When I caused you pain, you looked for consolation and you owe your genius to me. Genius understands or divines everything, and knows what human weakness is. Ah, if you had been weak and I mighty, how gladly I would have pardoned you! Had you done any wrong--if you were wrung by remorse like most of us--what joy to make you forget it. But no, you are honor itself, and I lose all hope?" "Poor creature!" sighed he, but still like marble though her arms enfolded him and palpitate warm unlike serpents whose coils their curves resembled. "You pity me?" she murmured coaxingly, although he did not thaw under her tightening clasp; "then, you agree?" He shook his head. As usual, when perversity defends, the pleading reached the judge too late. Her pressure became irksome, he thought of the devilfish tightening its rings till fatal, and, by an effort, irresistible while gentle, he disengaged himself from her arms. They dropped inert by her panting sides as if broken. But only for an instant her defeat overpowered her. "I see," she exclaimed, with a great change in her tone, "there is no more room in the heart which I deserted! You have replaced me with that Rebecca!" "It is true I love her," her rejoined, "but not as you suppose. Do not try to understand how, for you cannot understand. Heaven knows that I would have wished to associate you with me in the same love and the same glory, but it is impossible. Once we were ships in company, sailing side by side--I thought with the same sailing orders--but you stole away in the night and I have had to direct my course alone toward a sea eternally forbidden to you. Oh, if you only knew how far I am already from you! The being who speaks to me by your lips is not known to me--I see her not! I do not know who you are. The only bond between us is the chain the law imposes--let us carry it between us but each with the share apart."