feel so. How doleful this
thunder is! It seems to me like an omen of misfortune."

"It is only the fancy of your vivid imagination. If you exerted the same
will to be happy that you do to imagine troubles, our life would be
perfect. What matters the storm? and even if you do see an omen in it,
what is there so very terrible? Clouds are vapor, thunder is a sound,
both are equally ephemeral; only the blue sky, which they can obscure but
for a moment, is eternal."

"Did you not hear something just now?" asked Madame de Bergenheim, as she
gave a sudden start and listened eagerly.

"Nothing. What did you think it was?"

"I feared it might be Justine who had taken it into her head to come down
stairs; she is so tiresome in her attentions--"

She arose and went to look in her chamber, which she carefully locked; a
moment later, she returned and seated herself again upon the divan.

"Justine is sleeping by this time," said Octave; "I should not have
ventured if I had not seen that her light was out."

Clemence took his hand and placed it over her heart.

"Now," said she, "when I tell you that I am frightened, will you believe
me?"

"Poor dear!" he exclaimed, as he felt her heart throbbing violently.

"You are the one who causes me these palpitations for the slightest
thing. I know that we do not run any danger, that everybody is in his own
room by this time, and yet, somehow, I feel terribly frightened. There
are women, so they say, who get used to this torture, and end by being
guilty and tranquil at the same time. It is an unworthy thought, but I'll
confess that, sometimes, when I suffer so, I wish I were like them. But
it is impossible; I was not made for wrong-doing. You can not understand
this, you are a man; you love boldly, you indulge in every thought that
seems sweet to you without being troubled by remorse. And then, when you
suffer, your anguish at least belongs to you, nobody has any right to ask
you what is the matter. But I, my tears even are not my own; I have often
shed them on your account--I must hide them, for he has a right to ask:
'Why do you weep?' And what can I reply?"

She turned away her head to conceal the tears which she could not
restrain; he saw them, and, leaning over her, he kissed them away.

"Your tears are mine!" he exclaimed, passionately; "but do not distress
me by telling me that our love makes you unhappy."

"Unhappy! oh, yes! very unhappy! and yet I would not change this so