"Because I love you," he replied, almost fiercely. "And you! But if you loved me, you would bless them, these differences between our environments, instead of fearing them! You would see in the hostility of my circle--I admit that I had not thought of it!--a means of having me entirely to yourself. I should have heard you simply discuss the matter and hesitate. But the coldness of your reply, this keen analysis of our respective social positions, this balance-sheet of our families spread out before me, calmly, coldly, mathematically, when I had come here, mad with emotion, and thinking only of the life of the heart!--I am more deeply hurt by that than by your refusal. I might have discussed it and argued against your reasons. One does not discuss, one does not combat indifference. One submits to it, and it is horrible!" "How unjust you are, Landri!" she exclaimed. It very rarely happened that she addressed him so, by his first name. That caress of language, the only kind that she had ever bestowed on him, and that so seldom, came to her lips in face of the young man's evident despair. A woman who loves can endure everything, conceal everything, except the compassion aroused by a sorrow which she has inflicted upon the man she loves; and, destroying, by that involuntary outburst of her passion, the whole effect of her previous refusal, she added: "I! indifferent to you! Why, of whom was I thinking when I spoke, if not of you, solely and only of you, of your future and your happiness?" "How happy I should be," he interrupted, "if, on the other hand, you would think only of yourself, if you would have the selfishness of love, its exigences, its unreasonableness! And yet," he continued with the asperity of a passion which feels that it is reciprocated, despite all manner of resistance, and which is exasperated by that assurance, "it is true. You have some feeling for me in your heart. You are not a coquette. You would not make sport of a man who has shown you so plainly that he loves you, and how dearly! I said just now that you didn't love me. At certain times I believe it, and it tortures me. At other times I feel that you are so moved, so trembling--see, now!--Oh! by everything on earth that you hold sacred, Valentine,"--he had never before allowed himself that familiarity, which made her start like a kiss,--"if you really regard me with the feeling that I have for you, if my long fidelity has touched you, answer me. Is it true, really true, that between me and my happiness,--for you are my happiness, only you, I tell you,--between your heart and my heart there is nothing but that single, wretched obstacle, my name?" "There is nothing else," she replied, "I swear." "And you expect me to bow before that, to give you up because I am called Comte de Claviers-Grandchamp and you Madame Olier, and because my social circle will frown upon the marriage!" "It is not I who expect it," she replied, "it is life!"