egitimate wife:

"Well, yes, I wish to! Enough of dissimulation! I love him!" she
exclaimed.

Micheline, transfigured by passion, strong, and ready for a struggle,
threw herself in Jeanne's way, with arms outstretched, as if to prevent
her going to Serge.

"Well!" she said; "try to take him from me!"

"Take him from you!" answered Jeanne, laughing like a mad woman. "To whom
does he most belong? To the woman who was as ignorant of his love as she
was of his danger; who could do nothing toward his happiness, and can do
nothing for his safety? Or to the mistress who has sacrificed her honor
to please him and risks her safety to save him?"

"Ah! wretch!" cried Micheline, "to invoke your infamy as a right!"

"Which of us has taken him from the other?" continued Jeanne, forgetting
respect, modesty, everything. "Do you know that he loved me before he
married you? Do you know that he abandoned me for you--for your money, I
should say? Now, do you wish to weigh what I have suffered with what you
suffer? Shall we make out a balance-sheet of our tears? Then, you will be
able to tell which of us he has loved more, and to whom he really
belongs."

Micheline had listened to this furious address almost in a state of
stupor, and replied, vehemently:

"What matter who triumphs if his ruin is certain. Selfish creatures that
we are, instead of disputing about his love, let us unite in saving him!
You say he must go away! But flight is surely an admission of
guilt--humiliation and obscurity in a strange land. And that is what you
advise, because you hope to share that miserable existence with him. You
are urging him on to dishonor. His fate is in the hands of a man who
adores you, who would sacrifice everything for you, as I would for Serge,
and yet you have not thrown yourself at his feet! You have not offered
your life as the price of your lover's! And you say that you love him!"

"Ah!" stammered Jeanne, distracted. "You wish me to save him for you!"

"Is that the cry of your heart?" said Micheline, with crushing disdain.
"Well, see what I am ready to do. If, to remove your jealous fears, it is
necessary to sacrifice myself, I swear to you that if Serge be saved, he
shall be perfectly free, and I will never see him again!"

Micheline, chaste and calm, with hands raised to Heaven, seemed to grow
taller and nobler. Jeanne, trembling and overpowered, looked at her rival
with a painful effort, and murmured, softly:

"Would you