riting one to
the professor, in which he was about to be informed that she had resolved
to banish Alvan from her mind for ever. She stopped; her heart stopped;
the pen fell from her hand, in loathing. Her father warily bade her
proceed. She could not; she signified it choking. Only a few days before
she had written to the professor exultingly of her engagement. She
refused to belie herself in such a manner; retrospectively her rapid
contradictions appeared impossible; the picture of her was not human, and
she gave out a negative of her whole frame convulsed, whereat the General
was not slow to remind her of the scourgings she had undergone by a
sudden burst of his wrath. He knew the proper physic. 'You girls want the
lesson we read to skittish recruits; you shall have it. Write: "He is now
as nothing to me." You shall write that you hate him, if you hesitate!
Why, you unreasonable slut, you have given him up; you have told him you
have given him up, and what objection can you have to telling others now
you have done it?'

'I was forced to it, body and soul!' cried Clotilde, sobbing and bursting
into desperation out of a weak show of petulance that she had put on to
propitiate him. 'If I have to tell, I will tell how it was. For that my
heart is unchanged, and Alvan is, and will be, my lord, all the world may
see. I would rather write that I hate him.'

'You write, the man is now as nothing to me!' said her father, dashing
his finger in a fiery zig-zag along the line for her pen to follow. 'Or
else, my girl, you've been playing us a pretty farce!' He strung himself
for a mad gallop of wrath, gave her a shudder, and relapsed. 'No, no,
you're wiser, you're a better girl than that. Write it. I must have it
written-here, come! The worst is over; the rest is child's play. Come,
take the pen, I'll guide your hand.'

The pen was fixed in her hand, and the first words formed. They looked
such sprawling skeletons that Clotilde had the comfort of feeling sure
they would be discerned as the work of compulsion. So she wrote on
mechanically, solacing herself for what she did with vows of future
revolt. Alvan had a saying, that want of courage is want of sense; and
she remembered his illustration of how sense would nourish courage by
scattering the fear of death, if we would only grasp the thought that we
sink to oblivion gladly at night, and, most of us, quit it reluctantly in
the morning. She shut her eyes while writing; she fanci