y. I will try to have
strength enough to finish it. You must know all, in order that you, whom
I know to be a kind-hearted man as well as a man of the world, may have a
sincere desire to aid me with all your power.

"'Listen to me:

"'Before my marriage, I loved a young man, whose suit was rejected by my
family because he was not rich enough. Not long afterward, I married a
man of great wealth. I married him through ignorance, through obedience,
through indifference, as young girls do marry.

"'I had a child, a boy. My husband died in the course of a few years.

"'He whom I had loved had married, in his turn. When he saw that I was a
widow, he was crushed by grief at knowing he was not free. He came to see
me; he wept and sobbed so bitterly, that it was enough to break my heart.
He came to see me at first as a friend. Perhaps I ought not to have
received him. What could I do? I was alone, so sad, so solitary, so
hopeless! And I loved him still. What sufferings we women have sometimes
to endure!

"'I had only him in the world, my parents being dead. He came frequently;
he spent whole evenings with me. I should not have let him come so often,
seeing that he was married. But I had not enough will-power to prevent
him from coming.

"'How can I tell it?--he became my lover. How did this come about?
Can I explain it? Can any one explain such things? Do you think it could
be otherwise when two human beings are drawn to each other by the
irresistible force of mutual affection? Do you believe, monsieur, that it
is always in our power to resist, that we can keep up the struggle
forever, and refuse to yield to the prayers, the supplications, the
tears, the frenzied words, the appeals on bended knees, the transports of
passion, with which we are pursued by the man we adore, whom we want to
gratify even in his slightest wishes, whom we desire to crown with every
possible happiness, and whom, if we are to be guided by a worldly code of
honor, we must drive to despair? What strength would it not require? What
a renunciation of happiness? what self-denial? and even what virtuous
selfishness?

"'In short, monsieur, I was his mistress; and I was happy. I
became--and this was my greatest weakness and my greatest piece of
cowardice-I became his wife's friend.

"'We brought up my son together; we made a man of him, a thorough man,
intelligent, full of sense and resolution, of large and generous ideas.
The boy reached the age of se