comprehend that if I speak to you as I do, it is because I have need of
you in order to live?" Then in a low voice, choked by emotion: "It is
because I love you!" All the modesty natural to a child of twenty
mounted to her pale face in a flood of purple, when she had uttered that
avowal. "Yes, I love you!" she repeated, in an accent as deep, but more
firm. "It is not, however, so common a thing to find real devotion, a
being who only asks to serve you, to be useful to you, to live in your
shadow. And you will understand that to have the right of giving you my
life, to bear your name, to be your wife, to follow you, I felt very
vividly in your presence at the moment I was about to lose you. You will
pardon my lack of modesty for the first, for the last time. I have
suffered too much."

She ceased. Never had the absolute purity of the charming creature, born
and bred in an atmosphere of corruption, and remaining in the same so
intact, so noble, so frank, flashed out as at that moment. All that
virgin and unhappy soul was in her eyes which implored Julien, on her
lips which trembled at having spoken thus, on her brow around which
floated, like an aureole, the fair hair stirred by the breeze which
entered the open window. She had found the means of daring that
prodigious step, the boldest a woman can permit herself, still more so a
young girl, with so chaste a simplicity that at that moment Dorsenne
would not have dared to touch even the hand of that child who confided
herself to him so madly, so loyally.

Dorsenne was undoubtedly greatly interested in her, with a curiosity,
without enthusiasm, and against which a reaction had already set in.
That touching speech, in which trembled a distress so tender and each
word of which later on made him weep with regret, produced upon him at
that moment an impression of fear rather than love or pity. When at