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rth considering, deuce take it! M. de La Perriere, one of the Empress's secretaries, had been directed by her to visit the shelter of Bethlehem. Jenkins had come to take the Nabob to the secretary's office at the Tuileries and make inquiries. That visit to Bethlehem meant a cross for him. "Come, let us be off; I am with you, my dear doctor." He bore Jenkins no ill-will for disturbing him, and he feverishly tied his cravat, forgetting under the stress of his new emotion the agitation of a moment before, for with him ambition took precedence of everything. While the two men talked together in undertones, Felicia, standing before them, with quivering nostrils and lip curling in scorn, watched them as if to say: "Well! I am waiting." Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a visit of the utmost importance--She smiled pityingly. "Go, go. At the point where we are now, I can work without you." "Oh! yes," said the doctor, "the bust is almost finished. It's a fine piece of work," he added, with the air of a connoisseur. And, relying on the compliment to cover his retreat, he was slinking away, crestfallen; but Felicia fiercely called him back: "Stay, you. I have something to say to you." He saw by her expression that he must comply, under pain of an outbreak. "With your permission, my friend? Mademoiselle has a word to say to me. My coupe is at the door. Get in, I will be with you in a moment." When the studio door closed upon those heavy departing footsteps, they looked each other in the face. "You must be either drunk or mad to venture to do such a thing. What! you presume to enter my studio when I do not choose to receive? Why this violence? By what right?" "By the right that desperate, unconquerable passion gives." "Be quiet, Jenkins; those are words that I do not wish to hear. I let you come here through pity, through habit, because my father was fond of you. But never speak to me again of your--love"--she said the word very low, as if it were a disgrace--"or you will see me no more, even though I should be driven to die in order to escape you for good and all." A child taken in fault does not bend his head more humbly than Jenkins as he replied: "True--I was wrong. A moment of madness, of blindness. But why do you take pleasure in tearing my heart as you do?" "As if I were thinking of you!" "Whether you are thinking of me or not, I am here, I see what i
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