nd Renoldi added, shrugging his shoulders:

"You speak indifferently about the matter; you believe that it is easy
to break with a woman who tortures you with attention, who annoys you
with kindnesses, who persecutes you with her affection, whose only care
is to please you, and whose only wrong is that she gave herself to you
in spite of you."

But suddenly, one morning the news came that the regiment was about to
be removed from the garrison; Renoldi began to dance with joy. He was
saved! Saved without scenes, without cries! Saved! All he had to do now
was to wait patiently for two months more. Saved!

In the evening she came to him more excited than she had ever been
before. She had heard the dreadful news, and, without taking off her hat
she caught his hands and pressed them nervously, with her eyes fixed on
his, and her voice vibrating and resolute.

"You are leaving," she said; "I know it. At first, I felt heart-broken;
then, I understood what I had to do. I don't hesitate about doing it. I
have come to give you the greatest proof of love that a woman can offer.
I follow you. For you I am abandoning my husband, my children, my
family. I am ruining myself, but I am happy. It seems to me that I am
giving myself to you over again. It is the last and the greatest
sacrifice. I am yours for ever!"

He felt a cold sweat down his back, and was seized with a dull and
violent rage, the anger of weakness. However, he became calm, and, in a
disinterested tone, with a show of kindness, he refused to accept her
sacrifice, tried to appease her, to bring her to reason, to make her see
her own folly! She listened to him, staring at him with her great black
eyes and with a smile of disdain on her lips, and said not a word in
reply. He went on talking to her, and when, at length, he stopped, she
said merely:

"Can you really be a coward? Can you be one of those who seduce a woman,
and then throw her over, through sheer caprice?"

He became pale, and renewed his arguments; he pointed out to her the
inevitable consequences of such an action to both of them as long as
they lived--how their lives would be shattered and how the world would
shut its doors against them. She replied obstinately: "What does it
matter when we love each other?" Then, all of a sudden, he burst out
furiously:

"Well, then, I will not. No--do you understand? I will not do it, and I
forbid you to do it." Then, carried away by the rancorous feeling which
h