human
The country! she cried;
gpt
Madame, is there not my father?
human
May there not be some love, madame, that time only strengthens?
gpt
I never heard of it if there be. It would be a very dreary affair, I should fancy, smouldering, smouldering on and on like an ill-lit fire. Nobody would thank you for it, mon cher, _here_! Come, what is your secret? Tell it me.
human
Madame, one can refuse you nothing! My secret? It is a very simple one. The greatest pang of my enforced exile was the parting from one I loved; the greatest joy of my return is that I return to her.
gpt
thought Madame la Comtesse, giving him a soft glance of her beautiful blue eyes.
human
You are a very strange man. You have lived out of France till you have grown wretchedly serious and eccentric. Loved this woman for five years? Léon! Léon! you are telling me a fairy tale. Who is she, this enchantress? She must have some mysterious magic. Tell me--quick!
gpt
She is no enchantress, madame, and she has no magic save the simple one of having ever been very dear to me. We grew up together at Grande Charmille; she was the orphan niece of the Priest, a fond, innocent, laughing child, fresh and fair, and as untouched by a breath of impure air as any of the violets in the valley. She was scarcely out of the years of childhood when I left her, with beauty whose sweetest grace of all was its own unconsciousness. Through my five long years of exile I have remembered Favette as I saw her last under the elm-boughs in the summer light, her eyes dim with the tears of our parting, her young heart heaving with its first grief. I have loved her too well for others to have power to efface or to supplant her; of her only have I thought, of her only have I dreamed, holding her but the dearer as the years grew further from the hour of our separation, nearer to the hour of our reunion. I have heard no word of her since we parted; but of what value is love without trust and fidelity in trial? The beauty of her childhood may have merged into the beauty of womanhood, but I fear no other change in Favette. As we parted so we vowed to meet, and I believe in her love as in my own. I know that I shall find my Lorraine violet without stain or soil. Madame, Favette is still dearer to me now, Heaven help me, than five years ago. Five years--five years--true! it _is_ an eternity! Yet the bitterness of the past has faded for ever from me _now_, and I only see--the future!