ed away by some impulse, she walked toward him with
her hands outstretched; and when he had taken, pressed, and held these
two hands, she said, in a trembling, weak little voice, which was new to
her husband:

"Ah! my dear friend--how happy I am!"

And Bondel, who was watching them, felt an icy chill run over him, as if
he had been dipped in a cold bath.

FOUND ON A DROWNED MAN

Madame, you ask me whether I am laughing at you? You cannot believe that
a man has never been in love. Well, then, no, no, I have never loved,
never!

Why is this? I really cannot tell. I have never experienced that
intoxication of the heart which we call love! Never have I lived in that
dream, in that exaltation, in that state of madness into which the image
of a woman casts us. I have never been pursued, haunted, roused to fever
heat, lifted up to Paradise by the thought of meeting, or by the
possession of, a being who had suddenly become for me more desirable than
any good fortune, more beautiful than any other creature, of more
consequence than the whole world! I have never wept, I have never
suffered on account of any of you. I have not passed my nights sleepless,
while thinking of her. I have no experience of waking thoughts bright
with thought and memories of her. I have never known the wild rapture of
hope before her arrival, or the divine sadness of regret when she went
from me, leaving behind her a delicate odor of violet powder.

I have never been in love.

I have also often asked myself why this is. And truly I can scarcely
tell. Nevertheless I have found some reasons for it; but they are of a
metaphysical character, and perhaps you will not be able to appreciate
them.

I suppose I am too critical of women to submit to their fascination. I
ask you to forgive me for this remark. I will explain what I mean. In
every creature there is a moral being and a physical being. In order to
love, it would be necessary for me to find a harmony between these two
beings which I have never found. One always predominates; sometimes the
moral, sometimes the physical.

The intellect which we have a right to require in a woman, in order to
love her, is not the same as the virile intellect. It is more, and it is
less. A woman must be frank, delicate, sensitive, refined,
impressionable. She has no need of either power or initiative in thought,
but she must have kindness, elegance, tenderness, coquetry and that
faculty of assimilation whi