d silence reigned. Then he heard the fire crackling,
and shortly afterward a strange, startling sound--a sharp, gasping sob!

The pang which seized upon him was strong indeed. In one moment he
seemed to learn a thousand things by intuition--to comprehend her,
himself, the past. Before he moved he knew that Villefort was not in the
room, and he had caught a side glimpse of the pretty blue of Bertha's
dress.

But he had not imagined the face he saw when he turned his head to look
at her. She sat in a rigid attitude, leaning against the high cushioned
back of her chair, her hands clasped above her head. She stared at the
fire with eyes wide and strained with the agony of tears unshed, and
amid the rush of all other emotions he was peculiarly conscious of
being touched by the minor one of his recognition of her look of extreme
youth--the look which had been wont to touch people in the girl, Bertha
Trent. He had meant to speak clearly, but his voice was only a loud
whisper when he sprang up, uttering her name.

"Bertha! Bertha! Bertha!" as he flung himself upon his knees at her
side.

Her answer was an actual cry, and yet it reached no higher pitch than
his own intense whisper.

"I thought you were asleep?"

Her hands fell and he caught them. His sad impassioned face bowed itself
upon her palms.

"I am awake, Bertha," he groaned. "I am awake--at last."

She regarded him with a piteous, pitying glance. She knew him with a
keener, sadder knowledge than he would ever comprehend; but she did not
under-estimate the depth of his misery at this one overwhelming moment.
He was awake indeed and saw what he had lost.

"If you could but have borne with me a little longer," he said. "If I
had only not been so shallow and so blind. If you could but have borne
with me a little longer!"

"If I could but have borne with myself a little longer," she answered.
"If I could but have borne a little longer with my poor, base pride!
Because I suffered myself, I have made another suffer too."

He knew she spoke of M. Villefort, and the thought jarred upon him.

"He does not suffer," he said. "He is not of the fibre to feel pain."

And he wondered why she shrank from him a little and answered with a sad
bitterness:--

"Are you sure? You did not know that!"--

"Forgive me," he said brokenly, the face he lifted, haggard with his
unhappiness. "Forgive me, for I have lost so much."

She wasted few words and no tears. The force and su