and self-examination found nothing but selfishness in all his

thoughts and motives, in the answers which he framed and could
not utter. He was self-convicted. In his despair he longed to

fling himself from the window. The egoism of it was intolerable.
What indeed can a man say when a woman will not believe in love?

Let me prove how much I love you.--The _I_ is always there.
The heroes of the boudoir, in such circumstances, can follow the

example of the primitive logician who preceded the Pyrrhonists
and denied movement. Montriveau was not equal to this feat.

With all his audacity, he lacked this precise kind which never
deserts an adept in the formulas of feminine algebra. If so many

women, and even the best of women, fall a prey to a kind of
expert to whom the vulgar give a grosser name, it is perhaps

because the said experts are great PROVERS, and love, in spite of
its deliciouspoetry of sentiment, requires a little more

geometry than people are wont to think.
Now the Duchess and Montriveau were alike in this--they were both

equally unversed in love lore. The lady's knowledge of theory
was but scanty; in practice she knew nothing whatever; she felt

nothing, and reflected over everything. Montriveau had had but
little experience, was absolutelyignorant of theory, and felt

too much to reflect at all. Both therefore were enduring the
consequences of the singular situation. At that supreme moment

the myriad thoughts in his mind might have been reduced to the
formula--"Submit to be mine ----' words which seem horribly

selfish to a woman for whom they awaken no memories, recall no
ideas. Something nevertheless he must say. And what was more,

though her barbed shafts had set his blood tingling, though the
short phrases that she discharged at him one by one were very

keen and sharp and cold, he must control himself lest he should
lose all by an outbreak of anger.

"Mme la Duchesse, I am in despair that God should have invented
no way for a woman to confirm the gift of her heart save by

adding the gift of her person. The high value which you yourself
put upon the gift teaches me that I cannot attach less importance

to it. If you have given me your inmost self and your whole
heart, as you tell me, what can the rest matter? And besides, if

my happiness means so painful a sacrifice, let us say no more
about it. But you must pardon a man of spirit if he feels

humiliated at being taken for a spaniel."
The tone in which the last remark was uttered might perhaps have

frightened another woman; but when the wearer of a petticoat has
allowed herself to be addressed as a Divinity, and thereby set

herself above all other mortals, no power on earth can be so
haughty.

"M. le Marquis, I am in despair that God should not have
invented some nobler way for a man to confirm the gift of his

heart than by the manifestation of prodigiously vulgar desires.
We become bond-slaves when we give ourselves body and soul, but a

man is bound to nothing by accepting the gift. Who will assure
me that love will last? The very love that I might show for you

at every moment, the better to keep your love, might serve you as
a reason for deserting me. I have no wish to be a second edition

of Mme de Beauseant. Who can ever know what it is that keeps you
beside us? Our persistentcoldness of heart is the cause of an

unfailing passion in some of you; other men ask for an untiring
devotion, to be idolised at every moment; some for gentleness,

others for tyranny. No woman in this world as yet has really
read the riddle of man's heart."

There was a pause. When she spoke again it was in a different
tone.

"After all, my friend, you cannot prevent a woman from trembling
at the question, `Will this love last always?' Hard though my

words may be, the dread of losing you puts them into my mouth.
Oh, me! it is not I who speaks, dear, it is reason; and how

should anyone so mad as I be reasonable? In truth, I am nothing
of the sort."

The poignant irony of her answer had changed before the end into
the most musical accents in which a woman could find utterance

for ingenuous love. To listen to her words was to pass in a
moment from martyrdom to heaven. Montriveau grew pale; and for

the first time in his life, he fell on his knees before a woman.
He kissed the Duchess's skirt hem, her knees, her feet; but for

the credit of the Faubourg Saint-Germain it is necessary to
respect the mysteries of its boudoirs, where many are fain to

take the utmost that Love can give without giving proof of love
in return.

The Duchess thought herself generous when she suffered herself to
be adored. But Montriveau was in a wild frenzy of joy over her

complete surrender of the position.
"Dear Antoinette," he cried. "Yes, you are right; I will not

have you doubt any longer. I too am trembling at this
moment--lest the angel of my life should leave me; I wish I could

invent some tie that might bind us to each other irrevocably."
"Ah!" she said, under her breath, "so I was right, you see."

"Let me say all that I have to say; I will scatter all your
fears with a word. Listen! if I deserted you, I should deserve

to die a thousand deaths. Be wholly mine, and I will give you
the right to kill me if I am false. I myself will write a letter

explaining certain reasons for taking my own life; I will make my
final arrangements, in short. You shall have the letter in your

keeping; in the eye of the law it will be a sufficient
explanation of my death. You can avenge yourself, and fear

nothing from God or men."
"What good would the letter be to me? What would life be if I

had lost your love? If I wished to kill you, should I not be
ready to follow? No; thank you for the thought, but I do not

want the letter. Should I not begin to dread that you were
faithful to me through fear? And if a man knows that he must

risk his life for a stolen pleasure, might it not seem more
tempting? Armand, the thing I ask of you is the one hard thing

to do."
"Then what is it that you wish?"

"Your obedience and my liberty."
"Ah, God!" cried he, "I am a child."

"A wayward, much spoilt child," she said, stroking the thick
hair, for his head still lay on her knee. "Ah! and loved far

more than he believes, and yet he is very disobedient. Why not
stay as we are? Why not sacrifice to me the desires that hurt

me? Why not take what I can give, when it is all that I can
honestly grant? Are you not happy?"

"Oh yes, I am happy when I have not a doubt left. Antoinette,
doubt in love is a kind of death, is it not?"

In a moment he showed himself as he was, as all men are under the
influence of that hot fever; he grew eloquent, insinuating. And

the Duchess tasted the pleasures which she reconciled with her
conscience by some private, Jesuitical ukase of her own; Armand's

love gave her a thrill of cerebral excitement which custom made
as necessary to her as society, or the Opera. To feel that she

was adored by this man, who rose above other men, whose character
frightened her; to treat him like a child; to play with him as

Poppaea played with Nero--many women, like the wives of King
Henry VIII, have paid for such a perilous delight with all the

blood in their veins. Grim presentiment! Even as she
surrendered the delicate, pale, gold curls to his touch, and felt

the close pressure of his hand, the little hand of a man whose
greatness she could not mistake; even as she herself played with

his dark, thick locks, in that boudoir where she reigned a queen,
the Duchess would say to herself--

"This man is capable of killing me if he once finds out that I
am playing with him."