"Yet, it is the case!" Thérèse said. "You knew some of our anxieties already before this morning's scene. Now you know everything!... I came to you as a trusted friend.... I have absolute faith in your discretion, your judgment, and your affection.... Answer me straightforwardly.... What would you do in our place?" Boerzell lifted his arms in a gesture of despair: "Ah! mademoiselle!... You will tell me that I am choosing a very bad moment to reproach you ... yet you must agree that, had you been more indulgent and merciful, we should not find ourselves in such a distressing position to-day!..." "How is that?" Thérèse asked. "Well! I kept my promise, I kept it religiously.... I never spoke of marriage to you.... Many chances offered themselves to me for doing so.... I took advantage of none of them.... I was counting on your own heart to release me some day from my oath.... The more I came into your intimacy, and the more my hopes were strengthened.... Well! I deplore my patience.... I am sorry for my faithfulness.... If I had overcome them, I may presume that we would be married by now ... and once I were your husband, I could take a part in your family dissensions, I could discuss matters with M. Raindal; I might have persuaded him, caused him to change.... But to-day, as things are, what can I do? Nothing ... nothing, even less than nothing!... At my first words, M. Raindal would show me the door. Ah! mademoiselle, here you have a case, alas! a very painful one, where this marriage which you scorned so much might have proved of use to you!" He walked up and down the room, knocking against the table and the chairs, which he put back in place each time. Thérèse murmured: "Outside this marriage, do you see any other solution?" "No, mademoiselle!" Boerzell replied feverishly.... "I am neither related nor allied to you.... I have no hold on your father." He sighed deeply: "And to think that I would throw myself into the fire for your sake! I would sacrifice everything for you, anything that you might ask me to--and see now to what I am reduced!... To sending you away as if you were a beggar, a stranger come to beg from me!... I have not even the consolation of giving you my advice left.... Your father is the master.... You have nothing to do but to bow, and to let him go if he so wishes." Thérèse was worn out; her head leaning against the back of the divan, she began to cry in her handkerchief. "And now you are crying!" pursued Boerzell. "And I am compelled to let you cry.... If I only dared to come close to you and to take your hands in mine without your permission, I would at once become hateful to you.... A friend, yes, but a friend with whom one keeps one's distance, and whom one would treat as the very opposite of a gentleman if he made the slightest show of love!"