part with
them--ah, yes, I confess it, so great a grief that I could hardly find
the courage to do it--I am certain that I have only done what I ought to
have done as an obedient and loving woman."

And as he still grasped her hands, tears came to her eyes, and she added
in the same gentle voice and with a faint smile:

"Don't press so hard; you hurt me."

Then repentant and deeply moved, Pascal, too, wept.

"I am a brute to get angry in this way. You acted rightly; you could
not do otherwise. But forgive me; it was hard for me to see you despoil
yourself. Give me your hands, your poor hands, and let me kiss away the
marks of my stupid violence."

He took her hands again in his tenderly; he covered them with kisses; he
thought them inestimably precious, so delicate and bare, thus
stripped of their rings. Consoled now, and joyous, she told him of her
escapade--how she had taken Martine into her confidence, and how both
had gone to the dealer who had sold him the corsage of point d'Alencon,
and how after interminable examining and bargaining the woman had given
six thousand francs for all the jewels. Again he repressed a gesture
of despair--six thousand francs! when the jewels had cost him more than
three times that amount--twenty thousand francs at the very least.

"Listen," he said to her at last; "I will take this money, since, in
the goodness of your heart, you have brought it to me. But it is clearly
understood that it is yours. I swear to you that I will, for the future,
be more miserly than Martine herself. I will give her only the few sous
that are absolutely necessary for our maintenance, and you will find in
the desk all that may be left of this sum, if I should never be able to
complete it and give it back to you entire."

He clasped her in an embrace that still trembled with emotion.
Presently, lowering his voice to a whisper, he said:

"And did you sell everything, absolutely everything?"

Without speaking, she disengaged herself a little from his embrace,
and put her fingers to her throat, with her pretty gesture, smiling and
blushing. Finally, she drew out the slender chain on which shone the
seven pearls, like milky stars. Then she put it back again out of sight.

He, too, blushed, and a great joy filled his heart. He embraced her
passionately.

"Ah!" he cried, "how good you are, and how I love you!"

But from this time forth the recollection of the jewels which had been
sold rested like a we