victory over pride. She was sitting on the divan, and very near him. He saw her hair and her alabaster neck. For a moment he forgot all he owed to himself. He passed his arm around her waist, and clasped her almost to his breast.
She slowly turned her head towards him. He was astonished by the extreme anguish in her eyes. There was not a trace of their usual expression.
Julien felt his strength desert him. So great was the deadly pain of the courageous feat which he was imposing on himself.
"Those eyes will soon express nothing but the coldest disdain," said Julien to himself, "if I allow myself to be swept away by the happiness of loving her." She, however, kept repeatedly assuring him at this moment, in a hushed voice, and in words which she had scarcely the strength to finish, of all her remorse for those steps which her inordinate pride had dictated.
"I, too, have pride," said Julien to her, in a scarcely articulate voice, while his features portrayed the lowest depths of physical prostration.
Mathilde turned round sharply towards him. Hearing his voice was a happiness which she had given up hoping. At this moment her only thought of her haughtiness was to curse it. She would have liked to have found out some abnormal and incredible actions, in order to prove to him the extent to which she adored him and detested herself.
"That pride is probably the reason," continued Julien, "why you singled me out for a moment. My present courageous and manly firmness is certainly the reason why you respect me. I may entertain love for the maréchale."
Mathilde shuddered; a strange expression came into her eyes. She was going to hear her sentence pronounced. This shudder did not escape Julien. He felt his courage weaken.
"Ah," he said to himself, as he listened to the sound of the vain words which his mouth was articulating, as he thought it were some strange sound, "if I could only cover those pale cheeks with kisses without your feeling it."
"I may entertain love for the maréchale," he continued, while his voice became weaker and weaker, "but I certainly have no definite proof of her interest in me."
Mathilde looked at him. He supported that look. He hoped, at any rate, that his expression had not betrayed him.
