waited to avow all to me until I held in my hands the
undeniable proof of your infamy.... You have cast aside the mask, or,
rather, I have wrested it from you.... I desire no more.... As for the
details of the shameful story, spare me them. It was not to hear them
that I reentered a house every corner of which reminds me that I believed
in you implicitly, and that you have betrayed me, not one day, but every
day; that you betrayed me the day before yesterday, yesterday, this
morning, an hour ago.... I repeat, that is sufficient."

"But it is not sufficient for me!" exclaimed Boleslas. "Yes, all you have
just said is true, and I deserve to have you tell it to me. But that
which you could not read in those letters shown to you, that which I have
kept for two years in the depths of my heart, and which must now be
told--is that, through all these fatal impulses, I have never ceased to
love you.... Ah, do not recoil from me, do not look at me thus.... I feel
it once more in the agony I have suffered since you are speaking to me;
there is something within me that has never ceased being yours. That
woman has been my aberration. She has had my madness, my senses, my
passion, all the evil instincts of my being.... You have remained my
idol, my affection, my religion.... If I lied to you it was because I
knew that the day on which you would find out my fault I should see you
before me, despairing and implacable as you now are, as I can not bear to
have you be. Ah, judge me, condemn me, curse me; but know, but feel, that
in spite of all I have loved you, I still love you."

Again he spoke with an enthusiasm which was not feigned. Though he had
deceived her, he recognized only too well the value of the loyal creature
before him, whom he feared he should lose. If he could not move her at
the moment when he was about to fight a duel, when could he move her? So
he approached her with the same gesture of suppliant and impassioned
adoration which he employed in the early days of their marriage, and
before his treason, when he had told her of his love. No doubt that
remembrance thrust itself upon Maud and disgusted her, for it was with
veritable horror that she again recoiled, replying:

"Be silent! That lie is the worst of all. It pains me. I blush for you,
in seeing that you have not even the courage to acknowledge your fault.
God is my witness, I should have respected you more, had you said: 'I
have ceased loving you. I have taken a