compassion as would inevitably have filled with bitterness any
profligate who should have fallen in love with her; for, alas, it was
all charity, all sheer pity. Her renunciation of love, her dread of
what is called happiness for women, she proclaimed with equal
vehemence and candor. These happy days proved to me that a woman's
friendship is far superior to her love.

"I suffered the revelations of my sorrows to be dragged from me with
as many grimaces as a young lady allows herself before sitting down to
the piano, so conscious are they of the annoyance that will follow. As
you may imagine, the necessity for overcoming my dislike to speak had
induced the Countess to strengthen the bonds of our intimacy; but she
found in me so exact a counterpart of her own antipathy to love, that
I fancied she was well content with the chance which had brought to
her desert island a sort of Man Friday. Solitude was perhaps beginning
to weigh on her. At the same time, there was nothing of the coquette
in her; nothing survived of the woman; she did not feel that she had a
heart, she told me, excepting in the ideal world where she found
refuge. I involuntarily compared these two lives--hers and the
Count's:--his, all activity, agitation, and emotion; hers, all
inaction, quiescence, and stagnation. The woman and the man were
admirably obedient to their nature. My misanthropy allowed me to utter
cynical sallies against men and women both, and I indulged in them,
hoping to bring Honorine to the confidential point; but she was not to
be caught in any trap, and I began to understand that mulish obstinacy
which is commoner among women than is generally supposed.

"'The Orientals are right,' I said to her one evening, 'when they
shut you up and regard you merely as the playthings of their pleasure.
Europe has been well punished for having admitted you to form an