His sensitiveness was a disease, his pride was the only thing that kept him going; his love of her, strong as it was, would be drowned in an imagined shame! It was midnight.

She was alone with this secret.

She held the paper in her hand, which was at once Louis' sentence or his charter of liberty.

A candle was at her hand, the doors were shut, the blinds drawn, the house a frozen silence--how cold she was, though it was the deep of summer! She shivered from head to foot, and yet all day the harvest sun had drenched the room in its heat.
Yet her blood might run warm again, her cold cheeks might regain their colour, her heart beat quietly, if this paper were no more! The thought made her shrink away from herself, as it were, yet she caught up the candle and lighted it.
For Louis.

For Louis, though she would rather have died than do it for herself.