s that
have gathered in my heart during the past five years, thoughts that have
changed, and worn, and blighted it? I ought to have given a heart less
sorrowful to God."

"What can I say? Dear Antoinette, I will say this, that I love you; that
affection, love, a great love, the joy of living in another heart that
is ours, utterly and wholly ours, is so rare a thing and so hard to
find, that I doubted you, and put you to sharp proof; but now, today, I
love you, Antoinette, with all my soul's strength.... If you will follow
me into solitude, I will hear no voice but yours, I will see no other
face."

"Hush, Armand! You are shortening the little time that we may be
together here on earth."

"Antoinette, will you come with me?"

"I am never away from you. My life is in your heart, not through the
selfish ties of earthly happiness, or vanity, or enjoyment; pale and
withered as I am, I live here for you, in the breast of God. As God is
just, you shall be happy----"

"Words, words all of it! Pale and withered? How if I want you? How if I
cannot be happy without you? Do you still think of nothing but duty with
your lover before you? Is he never to come first and above all things
else in your heart? In time past you put social success, yourself,
heaven knows what, before him; now it is God, it is the welfare of my
soul! In Sister Theresa I find the Duchess over again, ignorant of
the happiness of love, insensible as ever, beneath the semblance of
sensibility. You do not love me; you have never loved me----"

"Oh, my brother----!"

"You do not wish to leave this tomb. You love my soul, do you say?
Very well, through you it will be lost forever. I shall make away with
myself----"

"Mother!" Sister Theresa called aloud in Spanish, "I have lied to you;
this man is my lover!"

The curtain fell at once. The General, in his stupor, scarcely heard the
doors within as they clanged.

"Ah! she loves me still!" he cried, understanding all the sublimity of
that cry of hers. "She loves me still. She must be carried off...."

The General left the island, returned to headquarters, pleaded
ill-health, asked for leave of absence, and forthwith took his departure
for France.

And now for the incidents which brought the two personages in this Scene
into their present relation to each other.

The thing known in France as the Faubourg Saint-Germain is neither a
Quarter, nor a sect, nor an institution, nor anything else that