"M. de Montriveau's prophecy has shaken my nerves," she said.
"It was a joke, but still I will see whether his axe from London

will haunt me even in my sleep. So good-bye, dear.--Good-bye, M.
le Marquis."

As she went through the rooms she was beset with enquiries and
regrets. Her world seemed to have dwindled now that she, its

queen, had fallen so low, was so diminished. And what, moreover,
were these men compared with him whom she loved with all her

heart; with the man grown great by all that she had lost in
stature? The giant had regained the height that he had lost for

a while, and she exaggerated it perhaps beyond measure. She
looked, in spite of herself, at the servant who had attended her

to the ball. He was fast asleep.
"Have you been here all the time?" she asked.

"Yes, madame."
As she took her seat in her carriage she saw, in fact, that her

coachman was drunk--so drunk, that at any other time she would
have been afraid; but after a great crisis in life, fear loses

its appetite for common food. She reached home, at any rate,
without accident; but even there she felt a change in herself, a

new feeling that she could not shake off. For her, there was now
but one man in the world; which is to say that henceforth she

cared to shine for his sake alone.
While the physiologist can define love promptly by following out

natural laws, the moralist finds a far more perplexing problem
before him if he attempts to consider love in all its

developments due to social conditions. Still, in spite of the
heresies of the endless sects that divide the church of Love,

there is one broad and trenchant line of difference in doctrine,
a line that all the discussion in the world can never deflect. A

rigid application of this line explains the nature of the crisis
through which the Duchess, like most women, was to pass. Passion

she knew, but she did not love as yet.
Love and passion are two different conditions which poets and men

of the world, philosophers and fools, alike continually confound.
Love implies a give and take, a certainty of bliss that nothing

can change; it means so close a clinging of the heart, and an
exchange of happiness so constant, that there is no room left for

jealousy. Then possession is a means and not an end;
unfaithfulness may give pain, but the bond is not less close; the

soul is neither more nor less ardent or troubled, but happy at
every moment; in short, the divinebreath of desire spreading

from end to end of the immensity of Time steeps it all for us in
the selfsame hue; life takes the tint of the unclouded heaven.

But Passion is the foreshadowing of Love, and of that Infinite to
which all suffering souls aspire. Passion is a hope that may be

cheated. Passion means both suffering and transition. Passion
dies out when hope is dead. Men and women may pass through this

experience many times without dishonour, for it is so natural to
spring towards happiness; but there is only one love in a

lifetime. All discussions of sentiment ever conducted on paper
or by word of mouth may therefore be resumed by two

questions--"Is it passion? Is it love?" So, since love comes
into existence only through the intimate experience of the bliss

which gives it lasting life, the Duchess was beneath the yoke of
passion as yet; and as she knew the fiercetumult, the

unconscious calculations, the fevered cravings, and all that is
meant by that word PASSION--she suffered. Through all the

trouble of her soul there rose eddying gusts of tempest, raised
by vanity or self-love, or pride or a high spirit; for all these

forms of egoism make common cause together.
She had said to this man, "I love you; I am yours!" Was it

possible that the Duchesse de Langeais should have uttered those
words--in vain? She must either be loved now or play her part of

queen no longer. And then she felt the loneliness of the
luxurious couch where pleasure had never yet set his glowing

feet; and over and over again, while she tossed and writhed
there, she said, "I want to be loved."

But the belief that she still had in herself gave her hope of
success. The Duchess might be piqued, the vain Parisienne might

be humiliated; but the woman saw glimpses of wedded happiness,
and imagination, avenging the time lost for nature, took a

delight in kindling the inextinguishable fire in her veins. She
all but attained to the sensations of love; for amid her poignant

doubt whether she was loved in return, she felt glad at heart to
say to herself, "I love him!" As for her scruples, religion,

and the world she could trample them under foot! Montriveau was
her religion now. She spent the next day in a state of moral

torpor, troubled by a physicalunrest, which no words could
express. She wrote letters and tore them all up, and invented a

thousand impossible fancies.
When M. de Montriveau's usual hour arrived, she tried to think

that he would come, and enjoyed the feeling of expectation. Her
whole life was concentrated in the single sense of hearing.

Sometimes she shut her eyes, straining her ears to listen through
space, wishing that she could annihilate everything that lay

between her and her lover, and so establish that perfect silence
which sounds may traverse from afar. In her tense

self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful to her;
she stopped its ill-omened garrulity. The twelve strokes of

midnight sounded from the drawing-room.
"Ah, God!" she cried, "to see him here would be happiness.

And yet, it is not so very long since he came here, brought by
desire, and the tones of his voice filled this boudoir. And now

there is nothing."
She remembered the times that she had played the coquette with

him, and how that her coquetry had cost her her lover, and the
despairing tears flowed for long.

Her woman came at length with, "Mme la Duchesse does not know,
perhaps, that it is two o'clock in the morning; I thought that

madame was not feeling well."
"Yes, I am going to bed," said the Duchess, drying her eyes.

"But remember, Suzanne, never to come in again without orders; I
tell you this for the last time."

For a week, Mme de Langeais went to every house where there was a
hope of meeting M. de Montriveau. Contrary to her usual habits,

she came early and went late; gave up dancing, and went to the
card-tables. Her experiments were fruitless. She did not

succeed in getting a glimpse of Armand. She did not dare to
utter his name now. One evening, however, in a fit of despair,

she spoke to Mme de Serizy, and asked as carelessly as she could,
"You must have quarrelled with M. de Montriveau? He is not to

be seen at your house now."
The Countess laughed. "So he does not come here either?" she

returned. "He is not to be seen anywhere, for that matter. He
is interested in some woman, no doubt."

"I used to think that the Marquis de Ronquerolles was one of his
friends----" the Duchess began sweetly.

"I have never heard my brother say that he was acquainted with
him."

Mme de Langeais did not reply. Mme de Serizy concluded from the
Duchess's silence that she might apply the scourge with impunity

to a discreet friendship which she had seen, with bitterness of
soul, for a long time past.

"So you miss that melancholypersonage, do you? I have heard
most extraordinary things of him. Wound his feelings, he never

comes back, he forgives nothing; and, if you love him, he keeps
you in chains. To everything that I said of him, one of those

that praise him sky-high would always answer, `He knows how to
love!' People are always telling me that Montriveau would give

up all for his friend; that his is a great nature. Pooh! society
does not want such tremendous natures. Men of that stamp are all

very well at home; let them stay there and leave us to our