d yourself. What is now my happiness cannot be yours. Don't you
know it? Have you entirely forgotten that I no longer belong to myself?
My life is bound to another, and this other is dearer, should be dearer
to me than my own existence."

"I know it," she replied, as she approached the little table and
quietly rested both hands upon it. "But if it's true that this woman,
to whom in an outburst of pride and anger you gave your hand, really
loves you, will she be able to endure the sorrow, when she sees that
she alone stands in the way of your happiness? I, if placed in such a
situation, would rather die than assert a light which I had obtained in
an unguarded moment, and which had at last become a sin against the
claim of nature."

He gravely shook his head. "Listen to me," he said. "Sit down there, my
beloved friend, and let us honestly endeavor to find some way out of
this labyrinth. It would be easier for you to understand me, if you
knew the woman whose life is so firmly bound to mine that nothing can
separate us, not even what you call the claim of nature. She knows all.
I've concealed nothing of what I suffered through you--"

"And you will be silent _now_?"

"I should not wish to be so, even if I could. There's no one on earth,
since I lost my brother, who is so well acquainted with my every
thought, every emotion of my heart. She's really my other self, my
better self, far gentler, stronger, and more self-sacrificing than I,
and I can never think of what I owe her during these years, without
wondering at my own levity, that I do not feel oppressed by these
debts, nay that I often imagine I can repay them daily with interest.
If you knew this loving, lovely creature--"

"Spare me the embarrassment of knowing her now through your
description. I will go, I see I have too long--"

"No, not so, you must not go so! You must hear me out, Toinette. This
will perhaps be the last conversation we shall ever hold. Shall we make
the wound this parting will cause still more painful by petty
irritation? What I've told you is literally true. But if I love this
woman as my better self, I feel for the first time at this moment--no,
since early this morning--that no matter how we may estimate self-love,
it cannot become a passion, an intoxication, a rapture of mingled
happiness and misery. Oh! passion! which you call the claim of nature;
I call it fate! It will be long ere the tempest will be laid which your
kiss has roused