"Yes, if I die!"
"Well, Valentine," resumed Maximilian, "I again repeat, you are right. Truly, it is I who am mad, and you prove to me that passion blinds the most correct minds. I appreciate your passionless reasoning. It is, then, understood, to-morrow you will be irrevocably promised to M. Franz d'Epinay, not by that theatrical formality invented to heighten the effect of a comedy called the signature of the contract, but your own will?"
"Again you drive me to despair, Maximilian," said Valentine; "again you turn the dagger in the wound! What would you do, tell me if your sister listened to such a proposition?"
"Mademoiselle," replied Morrel, with a bitter smile, "I am selfish, you have already said so, and, as a selfish man, I think not of what others would do in my situation, but of what I intend doing myself. I think only that I have known you now a whole year. From the day I first saw you, all my hopes of happiness have been in securing your affection. One day you acknowledged that you loved me; and since that day my hope of future happiness has rested on obtaining you; it has been life to me. Now, I think no more; I say only that fortune has turned I had thought to gain heaven, and now I have lost it. It is an every-day occurrence for a gambler to lose not only what he possesses, but also what he has not."
Morrel pronounced these words with perfect calmness; Valentine looked at him a moment with her large, scrutinizing eyes, endeavoring not to let Morrel discover the grief which struggled in her heart.
"But, in a word, what are you going to do?" asked she.
"I am going to have the honor of taking my leave of you, mademoiselle, solemnly assuring you that I wish your life may be so calm, so happy, and so fully occupied, that there may be no place for me even in your memory."
"Oh!" murmured Valentine.*
"Adieu, Valentine, adieu!" said Morre^ bowing.
"Where are you going?" cried the young girl, extending her hand through the opening, and seizing Maximilian by his coat, for she understood from her own agitated feelings that her lover's calmness could not be real; "where are you going?"
"I am going, that I might not bring fresh trouble into your family; and to set an example which every honest and devoted man, situated as I am, may follow."
"Before you leave me, tell me what you are going to do, Maximilian?" The young man smiled sorrowfully.
"Speak! speak!" said Valentine; "I entreat you."
