I shall try. What are we, after all, at this
moment? Brother and sister. Let us stay so. Marry that happy girl
who can have the joy of giving to your name the lustre it ought to
have, and which your mother thinks I should diminish. You will not
hear of me again. The world will approve of you; I shall never
blame you--but I shall love you ever. Adieu, then!

"Wait," cried the young man. Signing to La Bougival to sit down, he
scratched off hastily the following reply:--

My dear Ursula,--Your letter cuts me to the heart, inasmuch as you
have needlessly felt such pain; and also because our hearts, for
the first time, have failed to understand each other. If you are
not my wife now, it is solely because I cannot marry without my
mother's consent. Dear, eight thousand francs a year and a pretty
cottage on the Loing, why, that's a fortune, is it not? You know
we calculated that if we kept La Bougival we could lay by half our
income every year. You allowed me that evening, in your uncle's
garden, to consider you mine; you cannot now of yourself break
those ties which are common to both of us.--Ursula, need I tell
you that I yesterday informed Monsieur du Rouvre that even if I
were free I could not receive a fortune from a young person whom I
did not know? My mother refuses to see you again; I must therefore
lose the happiness of our evenings; but surely you will not
deprive me of the brief moments I can spend at your window? This
evening, then--Nothing can separate us.

"Take this to her, my old woman; she must not be unhappy one moment
longer."

That afternoon at four o'clock, returning from the walk which he
always took expressly to pass before Ursula's house, Savinien found his
mistress waiting for him, her face a little pallid from these sudden
changes and excitements.

"It seems to me that until now I have never known what the pleasure of
seeing you is," she said to him.

"You once said to me," replied Savinien, smiling,--"for I remember all
your words,--'Love lives by patience; we will wait!' Dear, you have
separated love from faith. Ah! this shall be the end of our quarrels; we
will never have another. You have claimed to love me better than I love
you, but--did I ever doubt you?" he said, offering her a bouquet of
wild-flowers arranged to express his thoughts.

"You have never had any reason to doubt me," she replied; "and, besides,
you don't know all," she added, in