But what Jean sought there was a protection, a shelter, a refuge.
The day of that memorable conversation on marriage without love, Bettina had also, for the first time, felt suddenly awake in her that necessity of loving which sleeps, but not very profoundly, in the hearts of all young girls.

The sensation had been the same, at the same moment, in the soul of Bettina and the soul of Jean.

He, terrified, had cast it violently from him.

She, on the contrary, had yielded, in all the simplicity of her perfect innocence, to this flood of emotion and of tenderness.
She had waited for love.

Could this be love?
The man who was to be her thought, her life, her soul--could this be he--this Jean?
Why not?
She knew him better than she knew all those who, during the past year, had haunted her for her fortune, and in what she knew of him there was nothing to discourage the love of a good girl.