She looked at him while he uttered these words in so melancholy a tone that she shuddered at it. He turned a little pale, realizing that she understood; and in an outrush of pity like that of the other day she drew him to her, pressing his hand against her heart. "I will try to wipe that out, too," she said, quivering with emotion. It was his part to seem not to comprehend all that that protestation signified, and he rejoined:-- "He was not content with refusing. He insists that, when I am married, I shall not live in Paris." "I will answer you like Ruth," she said. "'Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge.'" "Even if I do not simply leave Paris--even away from France?" "Even away from France." A little sign disclosed the intensity of the emotion with which she was overflowing. The pupils of her eyes dilated so that her blue eyes seemed to be black; and enveloping, caressing, embracing Landri in that sombre glance, she said:-- "You have no idea of the affection that I have been heaping up for you in my heart during these three years when I have hidden from you so much of what I felt, in order not to ruin you. That love has burrowed into me to such a depth that it would make me tremble if you were not you, if I were not sure that you will never expect of me anything except my duty, that you will never ask me to live under such conditions that my son would not be brought up, as he must be, so as to remain, even away from his country, a child of France!" She repeated: "Even away from his country;" then asked, timidly: "Does Monsieur de Claviers really demand it?" "He demands nothing," Landri replied. "But you think that that's the only way to reconcile him in some degree to the idea of our marriage, eh?" she asked; and, as he bowed: "Then we must not hesitate," she added. "You do not know either how much you have taught me to love him, even without knowing him; how grateful I am to him for the influence he has had on you, for the traces of his wonderful sense of delicacy which I find in yours. When I said yes to you the other day, I had a feeling of remorse for taking you from your duty and from his affection. You tell me that there is no occasion for it, that all is at an end between you. That takes away my remorse but makes me so sorry for you. Remember at all events that to part is not to forget each other. You may retain an image of each other against which you have no reproach to make. I hope that it may be so between Monsieur de Claviers and you, and that when he thinks of you he will realize that you loved him, that you still love him, as he deserves, and that there is only this life between you."