uch determined resolution, that Gaston saw
that further prayers would be in vain.

"Alas!" he cried, as he wrung his hands with despair, "you do not love
me; you have never loved me!"

"Gaston, Gaston! you do not think what you say! Have you no mercy?"

"If you loved me," he cried, "you could never, at this moment of
separation, have the cruel courage to coldly reason and calculate. Ah,
far different is my love for you. Without you the world is void; to lose
you is to die. What have I to live for? Let the Rhone take back this
worthless life, so miraculously saved; it is now a burden to me!"

And he rushed toward the river, determined to bury his sorrow beneath
its waves; Valentine seized his arm, and held him back.

"Is this the way to show your love for me?" she asked.

Gaston was absolutely discouraged.

"What is the use of living?" he said, dejectedly. "What is left to me
now?"

"God is left to us, Gaston; and in his hands lies our future."

As a shipwrecked man seizes a rotten plank in his desperation, so
Gaston eagerly caught at the word "_future_," as a beacon in the gloomy
darkness surrounding him.

"Your commands shall be obeyed," he cried with enthusiasm. "Away with
weakness! Yes, I will live, and struggle, and triumph. Mme. de la
Verberie wants gold; well, she shall have it; in three years I will be
rich, or I shall be dead."

With clasped hands Valentine thanked Heaven for this sudden
determination, which was more than she had dared hope for.

"But," said Gaston, "before going away I wish to confide to you a sacred
deposit."

He drew from his pocket the purse of jewels, and, handing them to
Valentine, added:

"These jewels belonged to my poor mother; you, my angel, are alone
worthy of wearing them. I thought of you when I accepted them from my
father. I felt that you, as my affianced wife, were the proper person to
have them."

Valentine refused to accept them.

"Take them, my darling, as a pledge of my return. If I do not come back
within three years, you may know that I am dead, and then you must keep
them as a souvenir of him who so much loved you."

She burst into tears, and took the purse.

"And now," said Gaston, "I have a last request to make. Everybody
believes me dead, but I cannot let my poor old father labor under this
impression. Swear to me that you will go yourself to-morrow morning, and
tell him that I am still alive."

"I will tell him, myself," she said.

Gaston fel