Mauprat
broke into heart-rending sobs. My sturdy breast heaved convulsively, but tears would not bring the relief I longed for. I could have roared in my anguish, and I had to bite my handkerchief to prevent myself from yielding to the temptation. The weird noise of my stifled sobs attracted the attention of some one who was praying in the little chapel on the other side of the wall which I had chanced to lean against. A Gothic window, with its stone mullions surmounted by a trefoil, was exactly on a level with my head.
"Who is there?" asked some one, and I could distinguish a pale face in the slanting rays of the moon which was just rising.
It was Edmée. On recognising her I was about to move away, but she passed her beautiful arm between the mullions, and held me back by the collar of my jacket, saying:
"Why are you crying, Bernard?"
I yielded to her gentle violence, half ashamed at having betrayed my weakness, and half enchanted at finding that Edmée was not unmoved by it.
"What are you grieved at?" she continued. "What can draw such bitter tears from you?"
"You despise me; you hate me; and you ask why I am in pain, why I am angry!"
"It is anger, then, that makes you weep?" she said, drawing back her arm.
"Yes; anger or something else," I replied.
"But what else?" she asked.
"I can't say; probably grief, as you suggest. The truth is my life here is unbearable; my heart is breaking. I must leave you, Edmée, and go and live in the middle of the woods. I cannot stay here any longer."
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