“Have you killed someone, Gaston?”

Valentine’s tone of horror gave Gaston a ray of reason.

“Yes,” he replied with bitterness, “I have killed two men.  It was for that that I have crossed the Rhone.  I could not have my father’s name disgraced by being tried and convicted for murder.  I have been tracked like a wild beast by mounted police.  I have escaped them, and now I am flying my country.”

Valentine struggled to preserve her composure under this last unexpected blow.

“Where do you hope to find an asylum?” she asked.

“I know not.  Where I am to go, what will become of me, God only knows!  I only know that I am going to some strange land, to assume a false name and a disguise.  I shall seek some lawless country which offers a refuge to murderers.”

Gaston waited for an answer to this speech.  None came, and he resumed with vehemence: 

“And before disappearing, Valentine, I wished to see you, because now, when I am abandoned by everyone else, I have relied upon you, and had faith in your love.  A tie unites us, my darling, stronger and more indissoluble than all earthly ties—­the tie of love.  I love you more than life itself, my Valentine; before God you are my wife; I am yours and you are mine, for ever and ever!  Would you let me fly alone, Valentine?  To the pain and toil of exile, to the sharp regrets of a ruined life, would you, could you, add the torture of separation?”

“Gaston, I implore you—­”

“Ah, I knew it,” he interrupted, mistaking the sense of her exclamation; “I knew you would not let me go off alone.  I knew your sympathetic heart would long to share the burden of my miseries.  This moment effaces the wretched suffering I have endured.  Let us go!  Having our happiness to defend, having you to protect, I fear nothing; I can brave all, conquer all.  Come, my Valentine, we will escape, or die together!  This is the long-dreamed-of happiness!  The glorious future of love and liberty open before us!”

He had worked himself into a state of delirious excitement.  He seized Valentine around the waist, and tried to draw her toward the gate.

As Gaston’s exaltation increased, Valentine became composed and almost stolid in her forced calmness.

Gently, but with a quiet firmness, she withdrew herself from his embrace, and said sadly, but resolutely: 

“What you wish is impossible, Gaston!”

This cold, inexplicable resistance confounded her lover.

“Impossible?  Why, Valentine——­”

“You know me well enough, Gaston, to be convinced that sharing the greatest hardships with you would to me be the height of happiness.  But above the tones of your voice to which I fain would yield, above the voice of my own heart which urges me to follow the one being upon whom all its affections are centred, there is another voice—­a powerful, imperious voice—­which bids me to stay:  the voice of duty.”