ctly sensible act, to which you are strongly
inclined--don't tell me you are not--whether, in short, you marry
Jacqueline, I shall be really as glad of it as I pretend. But have you
not found out what I have aimed at all along? Do you think I did not
know from the very first what it was that made you seek me?

"I was not the rope, but I had lived near the rose; I reminded you of
her continually. We two loved her; each of us felt we did. Even when you
said harm of her, I knew it was merely because you longed to utter her
name, and repeat to yourself her perfections. I laughed, yes, I laughed
to myself, and I was careful how I contradicted you. I tried to keep you
safe for her, to prevent your going elsewhere and forming attachments
which might have resulted in your forgetting her. I did my best--do me
justice--I did my best; perhaps sometimes I pushed things a little far
in her interest, in that of your mother, but in yours more than all; in
yours, for God knows I am all for you," said Giselle, with sudden and
involuntary fervor.

"Yes, I am all yours as a friend, a faithful friend," she resumed,
almost frightened by the tones of her own voice; "but as to the
slightest feeling of love between us, love the most spiritual, the
most platonic--yes, all men, I fancy, have a little of that kind of
self-conceit. Dear Fred, don't imagine it--Enguerrand would never have
allowed it."

She was smiling, half laughing, and he looked at her with astonishment,
asking himself whether he could believe what she was saying, when he
could recollect what seemed to him so many proofs to the contrary. Yet
in what she said there was no hesitation, no incoherence, no false note.
Pride, noble pride, upheld her to the end. The first falsehood of her
life was a masterpiece.

"Ah, Giselle!" he said at last, not knowing what to think, "I adore you!
I revere you!"

"Yes," she replied, with a smile, gracious, yet with a touch of sadness,
"I know you do. But her you love!"

Might it not have been sweet to her had he answered "No, I loved her
once, and remembered that old love enough to risk my life for her, but
in reality I now love only you--all the more at this moment when I see
you love me more than yourself." But, instead, he murmured only, like
a man and a lover: "And Jacqueline--do you think she loves me?" His
anxiety, a thrill that ran through all his frame, the light in his eyes,
his sudden pallor, told more than his words.

If Giselle