desire, no love, and at last, under a cowl, you look out upon the
world, and, with a dead heart, see it as in a pale dream, and die
at last: you, born to be a wife, without a husband; endowed to be
the perfect mother, without a child; to be the admired of princes,
a moving, powerful figure to influence great men, with no salon but
the little bare cell where you pray. With me all that you should be
you will be. You have had a bad, dark dream; wake, and come into the
sun with me. Once I wished for you as the lover only; now, by every
hope I ever might have had, I want you for my wife."

He held out his arms to her and smiled, and spoke one or two low
words which I could not hear. I had stood waiting death against
the citadel wall, with the chance of a reprieve hanging between
uplifted muskets and my breast; but that suspense was less than
this, for I saw him, not moving, but standing there waiting for
her, the warmth of his devilish eloquence about him, and she
moving toward him.

"My darling," I heard him say, "come, till death...us do part,
and let no man put asunder."

She paused, and, waking from the dream, drew herself together,
as though something at her breast hurt her, and she repeated his
words like one dazed--"Let no man put asunder!"

With a look that told of her great struggle, she moved to a shrine
of the Virgin in the corner, and, clasping her hands before her
breast for a moment, said something I could not hear, before she
turned to Doltaire, who had now taken another step towards her.
By his look I knew that he felt his spell was broken; that his