she exclaimed, with a great change in her tone, "there is no
more room in the heart which I deserted! You have replaced me with that
Rebecca!"

"It is true I love her," her rejoined, "but not as you suppose. Do not
try to understand how, for you cannot understand. Heaven knows that I
would have wished to associate you with me in the same love and the same
glory, but it is impossible. Once we were ships in company, sailing side
by side--I thought with the same sailing orders--but you stole away in
the night and I have had to direct my course alone toward a sea
eternally forbidden to you. Oh, if you only knew how far I am already
from you! The being who speaks to me by your lips is not known to me--I
see her not! I do not know who you are. The only bond between us is the
chain the law imposes--let us carry it between us but each with the
share apart."

"What is to become of me?" cried Cesarine, forced to try her last
weapon. "You picked up a starving boy on the road and was kind to him. I
am an outcast at your feet, hungry for love--succor me, no less kindly!
I am a living creature, and I may be taught many things. Utilize me by
your intelligence. Can I not be your pupil, your helper, your assistant?
Do for me what Daniels has done for his daughter--initiate me into
science, explain your labels to me and, associate me in your work."

"Teach you what you would sell!" he burst forth at the end of his
endurance.

"Can you believe that?" she faltered, receding a step, turning white and
trembling in the fear that he knew all.

"Believe? I am certain that you are lying now as always!" he thundered.
"It is impossible that your remorse should be sincere; it must mask some
infamy. You have perpetrated faults which are unattended by remorse.
Enough! If I am wrong, and you really do repent, it will not take a
minute, but years for you to be believed, and it does not concern me.
Apply to the Church, which alone can redeem and absolve such culprits as
you."

Convinced that she had lost the battle and forgetting her cunning,
Madame Clemenceau threw off the veil and showed herself the direct
offspring of the infernal regions. Her voice sounded like the hiss of
fiery serpents, and her frame quivered as if she stood in a current of
consuming vapor. Her eyes, too, wore that painful expression of depth of
agony as though her disappointment were excruciating. With his pardon,
love, protection and fortune, she might have defied Von Se