Camille ran to her with words of comfort and hope; he did not share her
fears. He remembered about when the Moniteur came, though not the very
day. He threw his arm lovingly round her as if to protect her against
these shadowy terrors. Her dilating eyes seemed fixed on something
distant in space or time, at some horrible thing coming slowly towards
her. She did not see Camille approach her, but the moment she felt him
she turned upon him swiftly.
"Do you love me?" still in the hoarse voice that had so little in it of
Josephine. "I mean, does one grain of respect or virtue mingle in your
love for me?"
"What words are these, my wife?"
"Then leave Raynal's house upon the instant. You wonder I can be so
cruel? I wonder too; and that I can see my duty so clear in one short
moment. But I have lived twenty years since that letter came. Oh! my
brain has whirled through a thousand agonies. And I have come back a
thousand times to the same thing; you and I must see each other's face
no more."
"Oh!" cried Rose, "is there no way but this?"
"Take care," she screamed, wildly, to her and Camille, "I am on the
verge of madness; is it for you two to thrust me over the precipice?
Come, now, if you are a man of honor, if you have a spark of gratitude
towards the poor woman who has given you all except her fair name--that
she will take to the grave in spite of you all--promise that you will
leave Raynal's house this minute if he is alive, and let me die in honor
as I have lived.
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