etters; I am flinging them one by one on the
fire; they are burning. You will never know what they confessed--all the
love and the passion and the madness----

"I will say no more, Armand; I will stop. I will not say another word of
my feelings. If my prayers have not echoed from my soul through yours,
I also, woman that I am, decline to owe your love to your pity. It is my
wish to be loved, because you cannot choose but love me, or else to
be left without mercy. If you refuse to read this letter, it shall be
burnt. If, after you have read it, you do not come to me within three
hours, to be henceforth forever my husband, the one man in the world for
me; then I shall never blush to know that this letter is in your hands,
the pride of my despair will protect my memory from all insult, and my
end shall be worthy of my love. When you see me no more on earth, albeit
I shall still be alive, you yourself will not think without a shudder
of the woman who, in three hours' time, will live only to overwhelm
you with her tenderness; a woman consumed by a hopeless love, and
faithful--not to memories of past joys--but to a love that was slighted.

"The Duchesse de la Valliere wept for lost happiness and vanished power;
but the Duchesse de Langeais will be happy that she may weep and be a
power for you still. Yes, you will regret me. I see clearly that I was
not of this world, and I thank you for making it clear to me.

"Farewell; you will never touch _my_ axe. Yours was the executioner's
axe, mine is God's; yours kills, mine saves. Your love was but mortal,
it could not endure disdain or ridicule; mine can endure all things
without growing weaker, it will last eternally. Ah! I feel a sombre joy
in crushing you that believe yourself so great; in humbling you with the
calm, indulgent smile of one of the least among the angels that lie at
the feet of God, for to them is given the right and the power to protect
and watch over men in His name. You have but felt fleeting desires,
while the poor nun will shed the light of her ceaseless and ardent
prayer about you, she will shelter you all your life long beneath the
wings of a love that has nothing of earth in it.

"I have a presentiment of your answer; our trysting place shall be--in
heaven. Strength and weakness can both enter there, dear Armand; the
strong and the weak are bound to suffer. This thought soothes the
anguish of my final ordeal. So calm am I that I should fear that I had
c