"I try to be so, but I
cannot! Why?"
"Why?" Amelie solved the query as every true woman does, who asks
herself why she loves one man rather than another. "Because he has
chosen me out in preference to all others, to be the treasure-keeper
of his affections! I am proud," continued Amelie, "that he gives
his love to me, to me! unworthy as I am of such preference. I am no
better than others." Amelie was a true woman: proud as an empress
before other men, she was humble and lowly as the Madonna in the
presence of him whom she felt was, by right of love, lord and master
of her affections.
Amelie could not overcome a feeling of tremor in the presence of
Pierre since she made this discovery. Her cheek warmed with an
incipient flush when his ardent eyes glanced at her too eloquently.
She knew what was in his heart, and once or twice, when casually
alone with Philibert, she saw his lips quivering under a hard
restraint to keep in the words, the dear words, she thought, which
would one day burst forth in a flood of passionate eloquence,
overwhelming all denial, and make her his own forever.
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