and here I stand--free!"

Nothing remained now but to take my freedom to my chamber, to carry it
with me to my bed and see what I could make of it. The play was not
yet, indeed, quite played out. I might have waited and watched longer
that love-scene under the trees, that sylvan courtship. Had there been
nothing of love in the demonstration, my Fancy in this hour was so
generous, so creative, she could have modelled for it the most salient
lineaments, and given it the deepest life and highest colour of
passion. But I _would_ not look; I had fixed my resolve, but I would
not violate my nature. And then--something tore me so cruelly under my
shawl, something so dug into my side, a vulture so strong in beak and
talon, I must be alone to grapple with it. I think I never felt
jealousy till now. This was not like enduring the endearments of Dr.
John and Paulina, against which while I sealed my eyes and my ears,
while I withdrew thence my thoughts, my sense of harmony still
acknowledged in it a charm. This was an outrage. The love born of
beauty was not mine; I had nothing in common with it: I could not dare
to meddle with it, but another love, venturing diffidently into life
after long acquaintance, furnace-tried by pain, stamped by constancy,
consolidated by affection's pure and durable alloy, submitted by
intellect to intellect's own tests, and finally wrought up, by his own
process, to his own unflawed completeness, this Love that laughed at
Passion, his fast frenzies and his hot and hurried extinction, in
_this_ Love I had a vested interest; and whatever tended either to its
culture or its destruction, I could not view impassibly.

I turned from the group of trees and the "merrie companie" in its
shade. Midnight was long past; the concert was over, the crowds were
thinning. I followed the ebb. Leaving the radiant park and well-lit
Haute-Ville (still well lit, this it seems was to be a "nuit blanche"
in Villette), I sought the dim lower quarter.

Dim I should not say, for the beauty of moonlight--forgotten in the
park--here once more flowed in upon perception. High she rode, and calm
and stainlessly she shone. The music and the mirth of the fete, the
fire and bright hues of those lamps had out-done and out-shone her for
an hour, but now, again, her glory and her silence triumphed. The rival
lamps were dying: she held her course like a white fate. Drum, trumpet,
bugle, had uttered their clangour, and were forgotten; with