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“So you are going on a long journey?” she asked.

He sat facing her, motionless, with anguish on his face. Outwardly she was very calm, only there was a sadness in her look and in her voice. In her white dress, with the girdle falling before her feet, she lay back among the three pillows of the rose-moiré sofa; the tips of her little slippers were buried in the white sheepskin rug. On the table before her lay a great bouquet of loose roses, pink, white and yellow, bound together with a broad riband. He had brought them for her and she had not yet placed them. There was a great calm about her; [234]the exquisite atmosphere of the boudoir seemed unchanged.

“Tell me, am I not paining you severely?” he asked, with the anguish in his eyes, the eyes which she now knew so well.

She smiled:

“No,” she said. “I will be honest with you. I have suffered, but I suffer no longer. I have struggled with myself for the second time and I have conquered myself. Will you believe me?”

“If you knew the remorse that I feel....”

She rose and went to him:

“What for?” she asked, in a clear voice. “Because you read me and gave me happiness?”

“Did I?”

“Have you forgotten?”

“No,” he said, “but I thought....”

“What?” [235]

“I don’t know; I thought that you would ... would suffer so ... and I ... I cursed myself!...”

She shook her head gently, with smiling disapproval:

“For shame!” she said. “Do not blaspheme!...”

“Can you forgive me?”

“I have nothing to forgive. Listen to me. Swear to me that you believe me, that you believe that you have given me happiness and that I am not suffering.”

“I ... I swear.”

“I trust that you are not swearing this merely to satisfy my wish.”

“You have been the highest thing in my life,” he said, gently.

A rapture shot through her soul.

“Tell me only....” she began.

“What?”

“Tell me if you believe that I, I, I ... [236]shall always remain the highest thing in your life.”

She stood before him, tall, in her clinging white. She seemed to shed radiance; never had he seen her so beautiful.

“I am certain of that,” he said. “Certain, oh, certain!... My God, how can I convey the certainty of it to you?”

“But I believe you, I believe you!” she exclaimed.

She laughed a laugh of rapture. In her soul a sun seemed to be shooting forth rays on every side. She placed her arm tenderly about his neck and kissed his forehead with a chaste caress.
............