"'T is she!" murmured Nanon. "And she was so lovely when she came to Saint-Georges! Poor woman!" She stepped back, with her eyes still fixed on the viscountess, and shaking her head. "Oh!" cried the viscountess with a touch of the pride that all men feel to know that their capacity for suffering is greater than their fellows'; "it is kind of you to say that, and it has done me good. I must have suffered cruelly to have undergone so cruel a change; I must have wept bitterly; I am more unhappy than you, therefore, for you are lovely still." And the viscountess raised her eyes, beaming with the first ray of joy that had shone in them for a month past, as if seeking Canolles in the sky above her head. Nanon, still on her knees, hid her face in her hands and burst into tears. "Alas! madame," said she, "I did not know to whom my petition was addressed; for the last month I have known nothing of what was taking place, and that ignorance has preserved my beauty; beyond all question I have been mad. Now I am at your command. I have no desire to make you jealous of the dead. I ask to be admitted here as the humblest of your nuns; you can do with me as you please, and if I disobey you can subject me to the severest discipline,--you have the dungeon and the _impace._ But," she added in a trembling voice, "you will at least let me from time to time see the place where the man we both loved so dearly is buried?" She fell, sobbing and almost unconscious, upon the turf. The viscountess made no reply; leaning against the trunk of a sycamore, she seemed ready to expire at her side. "Oh! madame," cried Nanon, "you do not answer; you refuse! Be it so; I have a single treasure in my possession, and you perhaps have nothing that was his; grant my request and that treasure is yours." As she spoke she took from her breast a large locket which was attached to a gold chain about her neck, and, offered it to Madame de Cambes, holding it open in her hand. Claire pounced upon the relic, and kissed the cold, life-less hair with such vehemence that it seemed as if her heart came to her lips to share the kiss. "Do you think," said Nanon, still kneeling at her feet, "that you have ever suffered more than I suffer at this moment?" "Ah! you carry the day, madame," said Claire, lifting her up and taking her to her arms; "come, come, my sister, for I love you better than all the world for having shared this treasure with me." She leaned over Nanon, as she gently raised her, and lightly kissed her cheek who had been her rival. "Yes, you shall be my sister and my dearest friend," said she; "yes, we will live and die together, talking of him and praying for him. He sleeps near by in our church; it was the only favor I could obtain from her to whom I devoted my life. May God forgive her!"