"Look here! Reflect! If you remain here, he'll come to-morrow to take you away, and seeing that he is your husband, seeing that he has right and law on his side." "I did not ask you to keep me in your own house, Jacques, but to take me anywhere you like. I thought you loved me enough to do that. I have made a mistake. Good-bye!" She turned round and went towards the door so quickly that he was only able to catch hold of her when she was outside the room. "Listen, Irene." She struggled and did not want to listen to him any longer, her eyes full of tears, and with these words only on her lips, "Let me alone! let me alone! let me alone!" He made her sit down by force, and falling once more on his knees at her feet, he now brought forward a number of arguments and counsels to make her understand the folly and terrible risk of her project. He omitted nothing which he deemed it necessary to say to convince her, finding even in his very affection for her motives of persuasion. As she remained silent and cold, he begged of her, implored of her to listen to him, to trust him, to follow his advice. When he had finished speaking, she only replied: "Are you disposed to let me go away now? Take away your hands, so that I may rise up." "Look here, Irene." "Will you let me go?" "Irene ... is your resolution irrevocable?" "Do let me go." "Tell me only whether this resolution, this foolish resolution of yours, which you will bitterly regret, is irrevocable?" "Yes ... let me go!" "Then stay. You know well that you are at home here. We shall go away to-morrow morning." She rose up in spite of him, and said in a hard tone: "No. It is too late. I do not want sacrifice; I do not want devotion." "Stay! I have done what I ought to do; I have said what I ought to say. I have no further responsibility on your behalf. My conscience is at peace. Tell me what you want me to do, and I will obey." She resumed her seat, looked at him for a long time, and then asked, in a very calm voice: "Explain, then." "How is that? What do you wish me to explain?" "Everything--everything that you have thought about before coming to this resolution. Then I will see what I ought to do." "But I have thought about nothing at all. I ought to warn you that you are going to accomplish an act of folly. You persist; then I ask to share in this act of folly, and I even insist on it." "It is not natural to change one's opinion so quickly." "Listen, my dear love. It is not a question here of sacrifice or devotion. On the day when I realized that I loved you, I said this to myself, which every lover ought to say to himself in the same case: 'The man who loves a woman, who makes an effort to win her, who gets her, and who takes her, contracts so far as he is himself, and so far as she is concerned, a sacred engagement. It is, mark you, a question of dealing with a woman like you, and not with a woman of an impulsive and yielding disposition.