t and cold, he begged of her, implored of her to
listen to him, to trust him, to follow his advice.

When he had finished speaking, she only replied:

"Are you disposed to let me go away now? Take away your hands, so that
I may rise up."

"Look here, Irene."

"Will you let me go?"

"Irene ... is your resolution irrevocable?"

"Do let me go."

"Tell me only whether this resolution, this foolish resolution of
yours, which you will bitterly regret, is irrevocable?"

"Yes ... let me go!"

"Then stay. You know well that you are at home here. We shall go away
to-morrow morning."

She rose up in spite of him, and said in a hard tone:

"No. It is too late. I do not want sacrifice; I do not want devotion."

"Stay! I have done what I ought to do; I have said what I ought to
say. I have no further responsibility on your behalf. My conscience is
at peace. Tell me what you want me to do, and I will obey."

She resumed her seat, looked at him for a long time, and then asked,
in a very calm voice:

"Explain, then."

"How is that? What do you wish me to explain?"

"Everything--everything that you have thought about before coming to
this resolution. Then I will see what I ought to do."

"But I have thought about nothing at all. I ought to warn you that you
are going to accomplish an act of folly. You persist; then I ask to
share in this act of folly, and I even insist on it."

"It is not natural to change one's opinion so quickly."

"Listen, my dear love. It is not a question here of sacrifice or
devotion. On the day when I realized that I loved you, I said this to
myself, which every lover ought to say to himself in the same case:
'The man who loves a woman, who makes an effort to win her, who gets
her, and who takes her, contracts so far as he is himself, and so far
as she is concerned, a sacred engagement. It is, mark you, a question
of dealing with a woman like you, and not with a woman of an impulsive
and yielding disposition.

"Marriage which has a great social value, a great legal value,
possesses in my eyes only a very slight moral value, taking into
account the conditions under which it generally takes place.

"Therefore, when a woman, united by this lawful bond, but having no
attachment to her husband, whom she cannot love, a woman whose heart
is free, meets a man whom she cares for, and gives herself to him,
when a man who has no other tie, takes a woman in this way, I say that
they pledge themselv