“Come, Silvine, I know you cherish bitter feelings against me—­and yet there is no reason why you should.  If I went away, if I have been cause to you of so much suffering, you might have told yourself that perhaps it was because I was not my own master.  When a man has masters over him he must obey them, mustn’t he?  If they had sent me off on foot to make a journey of a hundred leagues I should have been obliged to go.  And, of course, I couldn’t say a word to you about it; you have no idea how bad it made me feel to go away as I did without bidding you good-by.  I won’t say to you now that I felt certain I should return to you some day; still, I always fully expected that I should, and, as you see, here I am again—­”

She had turned away her head and was looking through the window at the snow that carpeted the courtyard, as if resolved to hear no word he said.  Her persistent silence troubled him; he interrupted his explanations to say: 

“Do you know you are prettier than ever!”

True enough, she was very beautiful in her pallor, with her magnificent great eyes that illuminated all her face.  The heavy coils of raven hair that crowned her head seemed the outward symbol of the inward sorrow that was gnawing at her heart.

“Come, don’t be angry! you know that I mean you no harm.  If I did not love you still I should not have come back, that’s very certain.  Now that I am here and everything is all right once more we shall see each other now and then, shan’t we?”

She suddenly stepped a pace backward, and looking him squarely in the face: 

“Never!”

“Never!—­and why?  Are you not my wife, is not that child ours?”

She never once took her eyes from off his face, speaking with impressive slowness: 

“Listen to me; it will be better to end that matter once for all.  You knew Honore; I loved him, he was the only man who ever had my love.  And now he is dead; you robbed me of him, you murdered him over there on the battlefield, and never again will I be yours.  Never!”

She raised her hand aloft as if invoking heaven to record her vow, while in her voice was such depth of hatred that for a moment he stood as if cowed, then murmured: 

“Yes, I heard that Honore was dead; he was a very nice young fellow.  But what could you expect?  Many another has died as well; it is the fortune of war.  And then it seemed to me that once he was dead there would no longer be a barrier between us, and let me remind you, Silvine, that after all I was never brutal toward you—­”

But he stopped short at sight of her agitation; she seemed as if about to tear her own flesh in her horror and distress.