you persecute me? Why do you follow me?"

"Because I want to save you."

"To save me! To snatch me back when I was going to find rest--an end for
my weary life! O yes, I know that it is a sinful end; but my life has
been all sin."

"Your life all sin! Foolish one, I will never believe that."

"It is true," she cried, with passionate self-reproach. "The sin of
selfishness, and pride, and disobedience. There is no fate too hard for
me--but, O, my fate is very hard! Why did you keep me from that river?
You do not know how miserable my life is--you do not know. I paid my
last penny to Madame Magnotte this morning. I have no money to take me
back to England, even if I dared go there--and I dare not. I have prayed
for courage, for strength to go back, but my prayers have not been
heard; and there is nothing for me but to die. What would be the sin of
my throwing myself into that river! I must die; I shall die of
starvation in the streets."

"No, no," cried Gustave passionately; "do you think I have dragged you
back from death to give you to loneliness and despair? My dear one, you
are mine--mine by right of this night. These arms that have kept you
from death shall shelter you,--ah, let them shelter you! These hands
shall work for you. My love, my love! you cannot tell how dear you are
to me. If there must be want or trouble for either of us, it shall come
to me first."

He had placed her on the stone bench, bewildered and unresisting, and had