An hour stole away. I was sitting on the brick parapet when the sound of her footsteps, mingling with the rustle of her light dress, fluttered the evening air. It was one of the sensations at which the heart stands still.
“Monsieur de Mortsauf is asleep,” said she. “When he has one of these attacks I give him a cup of tea made of poppy-heads, and the crisis is rare enough for the simple remedy always to take effect.—Monsieur,” she went on, with a change of tone of the most persuasive key, “an unfortunate accident has put you in possession of secrets which have hitherto been carefully kept; promise me to bury in your heart every memory of this scene. Do this for my sake, I beg of you. I do not ask you to swear it; the simple Yes of a man of honor will amply satisfy me.”
“Need I even say Yes?” I asked. “Have we failed to understand each other?”
“Do not form an unjust opinion of Monsieur de Mortsauf from seeing the result of much suffering endured in exile,” she went on. “He will have entirely forgotten by tomorrow all he said to you, and you will find him quite kind and affectionate.”
“Nay, madame,” said I, “you need not justify the Count. I will do exactly what you will. I would this instant throw myself into the Indre if I could thus make a new man of Monsieur de Mortsauf, and give you a life of happiness. The only thing I cannot do is to alter my opinion, nothing is more essentially a part of me. I would give my life for you; I cannot sacrifice my conscience; I may refuse to listen to it, but can I hinder its speaking? Now, in my opinion. Monsieur de Mortsauf is—”
“I quite understand you,” she said, interrupting me to mitigate the idea of insanity by softening the expression. “The Count is as nervous as a lady with the megrims; but it occurs only at long intervals, at most once a year, when the heat is greatest. How much evil the emigration brought in its train! How many noble lives were wrecked! He, I am sure, would have been a distinguished officer and an honor to his country—”
“I know it,” I replied, interrupting in my turn, to show her that it was vain to try to deceive me.
She paused and laid a hand on my brow.
“Who has thus thrown you into our midst? Has God intended me to find a help in you, a living friendship to lean upon?” she went on, firmly grasping my hand. “For you are kind and generous—”
She looked up to heaven as if to invoke some visible evidence that should confirm her secret hopes; then she bent her eyes on me. Magnetized by that gaze which shed her soul into mine, I failed in tact by every rule of worldly guidance; but to some souls is not such precipitancy a magnanimous haste to meet danger, an eagerness to prevent disaster and dread of a misfortune that may never come; is it not more often the abrupt question of heart to heart, a blow struck to find out whether they ring in unison?
Many thoughts flashed through me like light, and counseled me to wash out the stain that soiled my innocency even at the moment when I hoped for full initiation.
“Before going any further,” said I, in a voice quavering from my heartbeats, audible in the deep silence, “allow me to purify one memory of the past—”
“Be silent,” said she hastily, and laying a finger on my lips for an instant. She looked at me loftily like a woman who stands too high for slander to reach her, and said in a broken voice, “I know what you allude to—the first and last and only insult ever offered me!—Never speak of that ball. Though as a Christian I have forgiven you, the woman still smarts under it.”
“Do not be less merciful than God,” said I, my eyelashes retaining the tears that rose to my eyes.
“I have a right to be more severe; I am weaker,” replied she.
“But hear me,” I cried, with a sort of childish indignation, “even if it be for the first and last and only time in your life.”
“Well,” said she, “speak then! Otherwise you will fancy that I am afraid to hear you.”
I felt that this hour was unique in our lives, and I told her, in a way to command belief, that every woman at that ball had been as indifferent to me as every other I had hitherto seen; but that when I saw her—I who had spent my life in study, whose spirit was so far from bold—I had been swept away by a sort of frenzy which could only be condemned by those who had never known it; that the heart of man had never been so overflowing with such desire as no living being can resist, and which conquers all things, even death—
“And scorn?” said she, interrupting me.
“What, you scorned me?” said I.
“Talk no more of these things,” said she.
“Nay, let us talk of them,” replied I, in the excitement of superhuman anguish. “It concerns my whole being, my unknown life; it is a secret you must hear, or else I must die of despair!—And does it not concern you too—you who, without knowing it, are the Lady in whose hand shines the crown held
