"So I was bound to die young and to know no happiness," Julie
continued. "Yes, do not think that I live. Sorrow is just as fatal as
the dreadful disease which you have cured. I do not think that I am to
blame. No. My love is stronger than I am, and eternal; but all
unconsciously it grew in me; and I will not be guilty through my love.
Nevertheless, though I shall be faithful to my conscience as a wife,
to my duties as a mother, I will be no less faithful to the instincts
of my heart. Hear me," she cried in an unsteady voice, "henceforth I
belong to _him_ no longer."

By a gesture, dreadful to see in its undisguised loathing she
indicated her husband.

"The social code demands that I shall make his existence happy," she
continued. "I will obey, I will be his servant, my devotion to him
shall be boundless; but from to-day I am a widow. I will neither be a
prostitute in my own eyes nor in those of the world. If I do not
belong to M. d'Aiglemont, I will never belong to another. You shall
have nothing, nothing save this which you have wrung from me. This is
the doom which I have passed upon myself," she said, looking proudly
at him. "And now, know this--if you give way to a single criminal
thought, M. d'Aiglemont's widow will enter a convent in Spain or
Italy. By an evil chance we have spoken of our love; perhaps that
confession was bound to come; but our hearts must never vibrate again
like this. To-morrow you will receive a letter from England, and we
shall part, and never see each other again."

The effort had exhausted all Julie's strength. She felt her knees
trembling, and a feeling of deathly cold came over her. Obeying a