“Well, what do you want of me?”

“I want you.”

“Jenkins!”

“Yes, yes, I know; you have forbidden me to say such words before you, but other men than I have said them, and nearer still.”

“And if it were so, wretch!  If I have not been able to protect myself from disgust and boredom, if I have lost my pride, is it for you to say a word?  As if you were not the cause of it; as if you had not forever saddened and darkened my life for me!”

And these burning and rapid words revealed to the terrified Paul de Gery the horrible meaning of this apparently affectionate guardianship, against which the mind, the thought, the dreams of the young girl had had to struggle so long, and which had left her the incurable sadness of precocious regret, the heart-break of a life hardly begun.

“I loved you!  I love you still!  Passion excuses everything,” answered Jenkins in a hollow voice.

“Love me, then, if that amuses you.  As for me, I hate you not only for the wrong you have done me, all the beliefs and energy you have killed in me, but because you represent what is most execrable, most hideous under the sun—­hypocrisy and lies.  This society masquerade, this heap of falsity, of grimaces, of cowardly and unclean conventions have sickened me to such an extent, that I am running away exiling myself so as to see them no longer; rather than them I would have the prison, the sewer, the streets.  And yet it is your deceit, O sublime Jenkins, which horrifies me most.  You have mingled our French hypocrisy, all smiles and politeness, with your large English shakes of the hand, with your cordial and demonstrative loyalty.  They have all been caught by it.  They said, ‘The good Jenkins; the worthy, honest Jenkins.’  But I—­I knew you, and in spite of your fine motto on the envelopes of your letters, on your seal, your sleeve-links, your hat-bands, the doors of your carriage, I always saw the rascal you are.”

Her voice hissed through her teeth, clinched by an incredible ferocity of expression, and Paul expected some furious revolt of Jenkins under so many insults.  But this hate and contempt of the woman he loved must have given him more sorrow than anger, for he answered softly, in a tone of wounded gentleness: 

“Oh! you are cruel.  If you knew the pain you are giving me!  Hypocrite! yes, it is true; but I was not born like that.  One is forced into it by the difficulties of life.  When one has the wind against one, and wishes to advance, one tacks.  I have tacked.  Lay the blame on my miserable beginnings, my false entry into existence, and agree at least that one thing in me has never lied—­my passion!  Nothing has been able to kill it—­neither your disdain, nor your abuse, nor all that I have read in your eyes, which for so many years have not once smiled at me.  It is still my passion which gives me the strength, even after what I have just heard, to tell you why I am here.  Listen!  You told me once that you wanted a husband—­some one who would watch over you during your work, who would take over some of the duties of the poor Crenmitz.  Those were your own words, which wounded me then because I was not free.  Now all that is changed.  Will you marry me, Felicia?”