to hers with the
boldness of a man without hope, "I have an entreaty to make to you."

"To me?"

"Let me carry away with me your forgiveness. My life can never be happy;
it must be full of remorse for having lost my happiness--no doubt by my
own fault; but, at least,--"

"Before we part forever," said Modeste, interrupting a la Canalis, and
speaking in a voice of some emotion, "I wish to ask you one thing; and
though you once disguised yourself, I think you cannot be so base as to
deceive me now."

The taunt made him turn pale, and he cried out, "Oh, you are pitiless!"

"Will you be frank?"

"You have the right to ask me that degrading question," he said, in a
voice weakened by the violent palpitation of his heart.

"Well, then, did you read my letters to Monsieur de Canalis?"

"No, mademoiselle; and I allowed your father to read them it was to
justify my love by showing him how it was born, and how sincere my
efforts were to cure you of your fancy."

"But how came the idea of that unworthy masquerade ever to arise?" she
said, with a sort of impatience.

La Briere related truthfully the scene in the poet's study which
Modeste's first letter had occasioned, and the sort of challenge that
resulted from his expressing a favorable opinion of a young girl thus
led toward a poet's fame, as a plant seeks its share of the sun.

"You have said enough," said Modeste, restraining some emotion. "If you
have not my heart, monsieur, you have at least my esteem."

These simple words gave the young man a violent shock; feeling himself
stagger, he leaned against a tree, like a man deprived for a moment of
reason. Modest, who had left him, turned her head and came hastily back.

"What is the matter?" she asked, taking his hand to prevent him from
falling.

"Forgive me--I thought you despised me."

"But," she answered, with a distant and disdainful manner, "I did not
say that I loved you."

And she left him again. But this time, in spite of her harshness, La
Briere thought he walked on air; the earth softened under his feet, the
trees bore flowers; the skies were rosy, the air cerulean, as they are
in the temples of Hymen in those fairy pantomimes which finish happily.
In such situations every woman is a Janus, and sees behind her without
turning round; and thus Modeste perceived on the face of her lover the
indubitable symptoms of a love like Butscha's,--surely the "ne plus
ultra" of a woman's hope. Moreover, the grea