Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/283

Rh worthy of the matchless devotion you have shown me. I have vexed and grieved you so that you could never have forgiven me, had it not been for your infinite affection and forbearance. I have been thoughtless and fickle; and, even while loving you, as I have always done, passionately and almost to distraction, I have shown you nothing but the basest ingratitude. But a change has come over me; how great a change you can scarcely conceive. The tears which you have so often seen me shed since our departure from France have not once been called forth by my own misfortunes. They ceased to distress me from the moment when you began to share them with me. I wept only out of love and compassion for you. I am inconsolable to think that I should have caused you a single moment's pain in all my life. Incessantly do I reproach myself for my infidelities, and bow my heart in contrition as I marvel at the sacrifices which love has inspired you to make for the sake of a miserable girl who has been so little worthy of them, and who," she concluded, with a flood of tears, "though she were to lay down her very life, could never fully repay you for one half of the pangs which she has caused you."

Her tears, her words, the tone in which she uttered them, all combined to make such a powerful impression upon me, that I felt my heart throbbing as if it would leap from my bosom.

"Have a care!" I said to her, "have a care, my dearest Manon! Such fervent expressions of your love are more than my poor strength can bear; for rapturous joy like this is an unaccustomed sensation to me. Kind Heaven!" I then exclaimed, "I have now nothing more to ask of you. Manon's heart is mine—mine beyond all fear or doubt; mine, as I have longed for it to be that I might be completely happy! Come what may now, noth-