Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/215

Rh bearance to forget the distress which she had caused me; and, she added, she was beginning to see reason to fear that I would disapprove of what she had to tell me in self-justification.

"Justification!" I here broke in; "I ask for nothing of the sort from you. I approve of all that you have done. It is not for me to exact reasons for your conduct. I am only too well satisfied and happy as long as my dearest Manon does not cast me out of her heart. But," added I, forgetting for the moment the actual state of affairs, "all-powerful Manon—you who can at pleasure mete out to me joy or sorrow—now that I have propitiated you by my submission and by these evidences of my repentance, may I not be suffered to tell you of the misery and anguish to which I am a prey? May I not learn from your lips what my doom is to be to-day, and whether my sentence of death is to be irrevocably pronounced by your passing this night in my rival's arms?"

She pondered some moments before replying, and then, regaining her composure of manner, she said: "My dear Chevalier, had you expressed yourself as clearly as this at the outset, you would have saved yourself a great deal of agitation and spared me a very distressing scene. Had I known that jealousy alone was the source of all your grief, I would have relieved your mind by offering to follow you at once to the very ends of the earth. But I was under the impression that your annoyance was due to the letter I was forced to write you under G M's very eyes, and to the girl we sent with it. I thought that you might have regarded my letter as a piece of deliberate mockery, and, supposing the girl to have gone to you on my behalf, might have construed her errand as a declaration on my part that I intended to forsake you for G M. It was this idea that so suddenly overwhelmed me with