me impossible. The nations must
take their choice.

So a few months went by, and Mme. d'Aiglemont discovered that her life
was closely bound with this young man's life, without overmuch confusion
in her surprise, and felt with something almost like pleasure that she
shared his tastes and his thoughts. Had she adopted Vandenesse's ideas?
Or was it Vandenesse who had made her lightest whims his own? She was
not careful to inquire. She had been swept out already into the current
of passion, and yet this adorable woman told herself with the confident
reiteration of misgiving;

"Ah! no. I will be faithful to him who died for me."

Pascal said that "the doubt of God implies belief in God." And similarly
it may be said that a woman only parleys when she has surrendered. A day
came when the Marquise admitted to herself that she was loved, and
with that admission came a time of wavering among countless conflicting
thoughts and feelings. The superstitions of experience spoke their
language. Should she be happy? Was it possible that she should find
happiness outside the limits of the laws which society rightly or
wrongly has set up for humanity to live by? Hitherto her cup of life had
been full of bitterness. Was there any happy issue possible for the
ties which united two human beings held apart by social conventions? And
might not happiness be bought too dear? Still, this so ardently desired
happiness, for which it is so natural to seek, might perhaps be found
after all. Curiosity is always retained on the lover's side in the suit.
The secret tribunal was still sitting when Vandenesse appeared, and his
presence put the metaphysical spectre, reason, to flight.

If such are the successive transformations through which a sentiment,
transient though it be, passes in a young man and a woman of thirty,
there comes a moment of time when the shades of difference blend into
each other, when all reasonings end in a single and final reflection
which is lost and absorbed in the desire which it confirms. Then the
longer the resistance, the mightier the voice of love. And here endeth
this lesson, or rather this study made from the _ecorche_, to borrow a
most graphic term from the studio, for in this history it is not so much
intended to portray love as to lay bare its mechanism and its dangers.
From this moment every day adds color to these dry bones, clothes them
again with living flesh and blood and the charm of youth, and puts
vitality