gelique
turned quickly, and they fell at her feet. "Amelie's gifts are not for
me, Le Gardeur--I do not merit them! I confess my fault: I am, I know,
false to my own heart, and cruel to yours. Despise me,--kill me for it
if you will, Le Gardeur! better you did kill me, perhaps! but I cannot
lie to you as I can to other men! Ask me not to change my resolution,
for I neither can nor will." She spoke with impassioned energy, as if
fortifying her refusal by the reiteration of it.

"It is past comprehension!" was all he could say, bewildered at her
words thus dislocated from all their natural sequence of association.
"Love me and not marry me!--that means she will marry another!" thought
he, with a jealous pang. "Tell me, Angelique," continued he, after
several moments of puzzled silence, "is there some inscrutable reason
that makes you keep my love and reject my hand?"

"No reason, Le Gardeur! It is mad unreason,--I feel that,--but it is no
less true. I love you, but I will not marry you." She spoke with more
resolution now. The first plunge was over, and with it her fear and
trembling as she sat on the brink.

The iteration drove him beside himself. He seized her hands, and
exclaimed with vehemence,--"There is a man--a rival--a more fortunate
lover--behind all this, Angelique des Meloises! It is not yourself that
speaks, but one that prompts you. You have given your love to another,
and discarded me! Is it not so?"

"I have neither discarded you, nor loved another," Angelique
equivocated. She played her soul away at this moment with the mental
reservation that she had not yet done what she had resolved to do upon
the first opportunity--accept the hand of the Intendant Bigot.

"It is well for that other man, if there be one!" Le Gardeur rose and
walked angrily across the room two or three times. Angelique was playing
a game of chess with Satan for her soul, and felt that she was losing
it.

"There was a Sphinx in olden times," said he, "that propounded a riddle,
and he who failed to solve it had to die. Your riddle will be the death
of me, for I cannot solve it, Angelique!"

"Do not try to solve it, dear Le Gardeur! Remember that when her riddle
was solved the Sphinx threw herself into the sea. I doubt that may be
my fate! But you are still my friend, Le Gardeur!" added she, seating
herself again by his side, in her old fond, coquettish manner. "See
these flowers of Amelie's, which I did not place in my hair; I trea