in
advance. She crossed her arms upon her breast, and after a pause she
continued, in a grave voice: "You are going away?"

"Yes," he replied, and from his coat-pocket he partly drew his ticket.
"You see I have acted like the poltroons who cast themselves into the
water. My ticket is bought, and I shall no longer hold that little
discourse which I have held for months, that, 'Sir executioner, one
moment.... Du Barry'."

"You are going away?" repeated the young girl, who did not seem to have
heeded the jest by which Julien had concealed his own confusion at the
effect of his so abruptly announced departure. "I shall not see you any
more!... And if I ask you not to go yet? You have spoken to me of our
friendship.... If I pray you, if I beseech you, in the name of that
friendship, not to deprive me of it at this instant, when I have no
one, when I am so alone, so horribly alone, will you answer no? You have
often told me that you were my friend, my true friend? If it be true,
you will not go. I repeat, I am alone, and I am afraid."

"Come, little Countess," replied Dorsenne, who began to be terrified
by the young girl's sudden excitement, "it is not reasonable to agitate
yourself thus, because yesterday you had a very sad conversation with
Fanny Hafner! First, it is altogether impossible for me to defer my
departure. You force me to give you coarse, almost commercial reasons.
But my book is about to appear, and I must be there for the launching of
the sale, of which I have already told you. And then you are going away,
too. You will have all the diversions of the country, of your Venetian
friends and charming Lydia Maitland!"

"Do not mention that name," interrupted Alba, whose face became
discomposed at the allusion to the sojourn at Piove. "You do not know
how you pain me, nor what that woman is, what a monster of cruelty
and of perfidy! Ask me no more. I shall tell you nothing. But," the
Contessina that time clasping her hands, her poor, thin hands, which
trembled with the anguish of the words she dared to utter, "do you not
comprehend that if I speak to you as I do, it is because I have need of
you in order to live?" Then in a low voice, choked by emotion: "It
is because I love you!" All the modesty natural to a child of twenty
mounted to her pale face in a flood of purple, when she had uttered that
avowal. "Yes, I love you!" she repeated, in an accent as deep, but more
firm. "It is not, however, so common a thing