give me, nauseated by all its luxuries. Was it wonderful that I
allowed myself to be lured into this affair? It promised some
excitement, a certain novelty, difficulties in a path that I had -
alas! - ever found all too smooth - for Chatellerault had made your
reputed coldness the chief bolster of his opinion that I should not
win.

"Again, I was not given to over-nice scruples. I make no secret of
my infirmities, but do not blame me too much. If you could see the
fine demoiselles we have in Paris, if you could listen to their
tenets and take a deep look into their lives, you would not marvel
at me. I had never known any but these. On the night of my coming
to Lavedan, your sweetness, your pure innocence, your almost childish
virtue, dazed me by their novelty. From that first moment I became
your slave. Then I was in your garden day by day. And here, in
this old Languedoc garden with you and your roses, during the
languorous days of my convalescence, is it wonderful that some of
the purity, some of the sweetness that was of you and of your roses,
should have crept into my heart and cleansed it a little? Ah,
mademoiselle!" I cried - and, coming close to her, I would have
bent my knee in intercession but that she restrained me.

"Monsieur," she interrupted, "we harass ourselves in vain. This can
have but one ending."

Her tones were cold, but the coldness I knew was forced - else had
she not said "we harass ourselves." Instead of quelling my ardour,
it gave it fuel.

"True, mademoiselle," I cried, almost exultantly. "It can end but