"No, no!" I said hastily.

Doesn't this little scene read to you like a page out of some
diabolical drama?

It was repeated again and again under various pretexts. At last my
mother-in-law said to me: "I understand why you do not go to Les
Touches, and I think you are right."

Oh! you must admit, mamma, that an involuntary, unconscious stab
like that would have decided you to find out if your happiness
rested on such a frail foundation that it would perish at a mere
touch. To do Calyste justice, he never proposed to me to visit
that hermitage, now his property. But as soon as we love we are
creatures devoid of common-sense, and this silence, this reserve
piqued me; so I said to him one day: "What are you afraid of at
Les Touches, that you alone never speak of the place?"

"Let us go there," he replied.

So there I was /caught/,--like other women who want to be caught,
and who trust to chance to cut the Gordian knot of their
indecision. So to Les Touches we went.

It is enchanting, in a style profoundly artistic. I took delight
in that place of horror where Mademoiselle des Touches had so
earnestly forbidden me to go. Poisonous flowers are all charming;
Satan sowed them--for the devil has flowers as well as God; we
have only to look within our souls to see the two shared in the
making of us. What delicious acrity in a situation where I played,