'Unfaithfulness?'

'You would be you!'

'Do you not say that because you cannot suspect evil of me?'

'Let me only see you!'

'You are sure that happiness would not smother it?'

'Has it done so yet?'

'Though you know I am a serpent to that man's music?'

'Ah, heaven! Oh!--do not say music. Yes! though anything!'

'And if ever you were to witness the power of his just breathing to me?'

'I would . . . . Ah!'

'What? If you saw his music working the spell?--even the first notes of
his prelude!'

'I would wait'

'It might be for long.'

'I would eat my heart.'

'Bitter! bitter!'

'I would wait till he flung you off, and kneel to you.'

She had a seizure of the nerves.

The likeness between them was, she felt, too flamingly keen to be looked
at further. She reached to the dim idea of some such nauseous devotion,
and took a shot in her breast as she did so, and abjured it, and softened
to her victim. Clotilde opened her arms, charming away her wound, as she
soothed him, both by the act of soothing and the reflection that she
could not be so very like one whom she pitied and consoled.

She was charitably tender. If it be thought that she was cruel to excess,
plead for her the temptation to simple human nature at sight of a youth
who could be precipitated into the writhings of dissolution, and raised
out of it by a smile. This young man's responsive spirit acted on her as
the discovery of specifics for restoring soundness to the frame excites
the brilliant empiric: he would slay us with benevolent soul to show the
miracle of our revival. Worship provokes the mortal goddess to a
manifestation of her powers; and really the devotee is full half to
blame.

She had latterly been thinking of Alvan's rejection of the part of
centaur; and his phrase, the quadruped man, breathed meaning. He was to
gain her lawfully after dominating her utterly. That was right, but it
levelled imagination. There is in the sentimental kingdom of Love a form
of reasoning, by which a lady of romantic notions who is dominated
utterly, will ask herself why she should be gained lawfully: and she is
moved to do so by the consideration that if the latter, no necessity can
exist for the former: and the reverse. In the union of the two conditions
she sees herself slavishly domesticated. With her Indian Bacchus
imagination rose, for he was pliant: she had only to fancy, and he was
beside her.--Quick to the saddle, away! The forest of te