"Let him think what he will!" concluded Marguerite courageously. "Let
him despise me! I am here where I ought to be. I need his forgiveness,
but if he does not pardon me, I shall stay with him just the same.
. . . There are moments when I wish that he may never recover his sight,
so that he may always need me, so that I may pass my life at his side,
sacrificing everything for him."
"And I?" said Desnoyers.
Marguerite looked at him with clouded eyes as though she were just
awaking. It was true--and the other one? . . . Kindled by the proposed
sacrifice which was to be her expiation, she had forgotten the man
before her.
"You!" she said after a long pause. "You must leave me. . . . Life is
not what we have thought it. Had it not been for the war, we might,
perhaps, have realized our dream, but now! . . . Listen carefully and
try to understand. For the remainder of my life, I shall carry the
heaviest burden, and yet at the same time it will be sweet, since the
more it weighs me down the greater will my atonement be. Never will I
leave this man whom I have so grievously wronged, now that he is more
alone in the world and will need protection like a child. Why do you
come to share my fate? How could it be possible for you to live with
a nurse constantly at the side of a blind and worthy man whom we would
constantly offend with our passion? .
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