hose misfortune
it has been that he fancied you so far superior as to understand that,
though a man's heart ought to be true, his sex may be allowed to indulge
its caprices."

"And do you suppose that I shall not make it my business to restore to
you all you have lost by me? Be quite easy," said Madame de la Baudraye,
astounded by this attack. "Your Ellenore is not dying; and if God
gives her life, if you amend your ways, if you give up courtesans and
actresses, we will find you a better match than a Felicie Cardot."

The two lovers were sullen. Lousteau affected dejection, he aimed at
appearing hard and cold; while Dinah, really distressed, listened to the
reproaches of her heart.

"Why," said Lousteau presently, "why not end as we ought to have
begun--hide our love from all eyes, and see each other in secret?"

"Never!" cried the new-made Countess, with an icy look. "Do you not
comprehend that we are, after all, but finite creatures? Our feelings
seem infinite by reason of our anticipation of heaven, but here on earth
they are limited by the strength of our physical being. There are some
feeble, mean natures which may receive an endless number of wounds and
live on; but there are some more highly-tempered souls which snap at
last under repeated blows. You have--"

"Oh! enough!" cried he. "No more copy! Your dissertation is unnecessary,
since you can justify yourself by merely saying--'I have ceased to
love!'"

"What!" she exclaimed in bewilderment. "Is it I who have ceased to
love?"

"Certainly. You have calculated that I gave you more trouble, more
vexation than pleasure, and you desert your partner--"

"I desert!----" cried she, clasping her hands.

"Have not you yourself just said 'Never'?"

"Well, then, yes! _Never_," she repeated vehemently.

This final _Never_, spoken in the fear of falling once more under
Lousteau's influence, was interpreted by him as the death-warrant of his
power, since Dinah remained insensible to his sarcastic scorn.

The journalist could not suppress a tear. He was losing a sincere and
unbounded affection. He had found in Dinah the gentlest La Valliere,
the most delightful Pompadour that any egoist short of a king could hope
for; and, like a boy who has discovered that by dint of tormenting a
cockchafer he has killed it, Lousteau shed a tear.

Madame de la Baudraye rushed out of the private room where they had been
dining, paid the bill, and fled home to the Rue de l'Arcad