Tell him,'" repeated Anne Mie slowly.
An oath! Now he understood, and oh! how he pitied her.

How terribly she must have suffered in her poor, harassed soul when her noble, upright nature fought against this hideous treachery.
That she was true and brave in herself, of that Deroulede had no doubt.
And now this awful sin upon her conscience, which must be causing her endless misery.
And, alas! the atonement would never free her from the load of self-condemnation.

She had elected to pay with her life for her treason against him and his family.

She would be arraigned before a tribunal which would inevitably condemn her.

Oh! the pity of it all! One moment's passionate emotion, a lifelong superstition and mistaken sense of duty, and now this endless misery, this terrible atonement of a wrong that could never be undone.
And she had never loved him! That was the true, the only sting which he knew now; it rankled more than her sin, more than her falsehood, more than the shattering of his ideal.
With a passionate desire for his safety, she had sacrificed herself in order to atone for the material evil which she had done.
But there was the wreck of his hopes and of his dreams! Never until now, when he had irretrievably lost her, did Deroulede realise how great had been his hopes; how he had watched day after day for a look in her eyes, a word from her lips, to show him that she too -- his unattainable saint--would one day come to earth, and respond to his love.
And now and then, when her beautiful face lighted up at sight of him, when she smiled a greeting to him on his return from his work, when she looked with pride and admiration on him from the public bench in the assemblies of the Convention--then he had begun to hope, to think, to dream.
And it was all a sham! A mask to hide the terrible conflict that was raging within her soul, nothing more.
She did not love him, of that he felt convinced.