I
don't reproach you with anything. I well know that you have struggled,
and have never betrayed yourself to her either by word or glance.
Yesterday she herself was still ignorant that she loved you, and I had to
open her eyes.... What would you have? I simply state a fact: she
loves you."

This time Pierre, still quivering, made a gesture of mingled rapture and
terror, as if some divine and long-desired blessing were falling upon him
from heaven and crushing him beneath its weight.

"Well, then," he said, after a brief pause, "it is all over.... Let us
kiss one another for the last time, and then I'll go."

"Go? Why? You must stay with us. Nothing could be more simple: you love
Marie and she loves you. I give her to you."

A loud cry came from Pierre, who wildly raised his hands again with a
gesture of fright and rapture. "You give me Marie?" he replied. "You, who
adore her, who have been waiting for her for months? No, no, it would
overcome me, it would terrify me, as if you gave me your very heart after
tearing it from your breast. No, no! I will not accept your sacrifice!"

"But as it is only gratitude and affection that Marie feels for me," said
Guillaume, "as it is you whom she really loves, am I to take a mean
advantage of the engagements which she entered into unconsciously, and
force her to a marriage when I know that she would never be wholly mine?
Besides, I have made a mistake, it isn't I who give her to you, she has
already given herself, and I do not consider that I have any right to
prevent her from doing so."

"No, no! I will never accept, I will never bring such grief upon you...
Kiss me, brother, and let me go."

Thereupon Guillaume caught hold of Pierre and compelled him to sit down
by his side on an old sofa near the window. And he began to scold him
almost angrily while still retaining a smile, in which suffering and
kindliness were blended. "Come," said he, "we are surely not going to
fight over it. You won't force me to tie you up so as to keep you here? I
know what I'm about. I thought it all over before I spoke to you. No
doubt, I can't tell you that it gladdens me. I thought at first that I
was going to die; I should have liked to hide myself in the very depths
of the earth. And then, well, it was necessary to be reasonable, and I
understood that things had arranged themselves for the best, in their
natural order."

Pierre, unable to resist any further, had begun to weep with both hand