e trembled for the first time, and
fell to sobbing hysterically.

He threw himself at her knees, and embraced them again and again, and
begged her forgiveness in a transport of remorse and self-reproach.

She looked down with tender pity on him, and heard his cries of
penitence and shame.

"Rise, Camille, and go home with me," said she faintly.

"Yes, Josephine."

They went slowly and in silence. Camille was too ashamed and penitent
to speak; too full of terror too at the abyss of crime from which he
had been saved. The ancients feigned that a virgin could subdue a lion;
perhaps they meant that a pure gentle nature can subdue a nature fierce
but generous. Lion-like Camille walked by Josephine's side with his eyes
bent on the ground, the picture of humility and penitence.

"This is the last walk you and I shall take together," said Josephine
solemnly.

"I know it," said he humbly. "I have forfeited all right to be by your
side."

"My poor, lost love," sighed Josephine, "will you never understand
me? You never stood higher in my esteem than at this moment. It is the
avowal you have forced from ME that parts us. The man to whom I have
said 'I'--must not remain beneath my husband's roof. Does not your sense
of honor agree with mine?"

"It does," faltered he.

"To-morrow you must leave the chateau."

"I will obey you."

"What, you do not resist, you do not break my heart by complaints, by
reproaches?"

"No, Josephine, all is changed. I thought you unfeeling: I thought you
were going to be HAPPY with him; that was what maddened me."

"I pray daily YOU may be happy, no matter how. But you and I are not
alike, dear as we are to one another. Well, do not fear: I shall never
be happy--will that soothe you, Camille?"

"Yes, Josephine, all is changed; the words you have spoken have driven
the fiends out of my heart. I have nothing to do now but to obey, you to
command: it is your right. Since you love me a little still, dispose
of me. Bid me live: bid me die: bid me stay: bid me go. I shall never
disobey the angel who loves me, my only friend upon the earth."

A single deep sob from Josephine was all the answer.

Then he could not help asking her why she had not trusted him?

"Why did you not say to me long ago, 'I love you, but I am a wife; my
husband is an honest soldier, absent, and fighting for France: I am the
guardian of his honor and my own; be just, be generous, be self-denying;
depart and love me on