time for
confidences, then?"

She looked at me in astonishment.

"And yet," I continued, "we must some day come to the truth. Now I
believe it would be well to begin at once; that will make you confiding,
and there is nothing like an understanding between friends."

Doubtless my face betrayed me as I spoke these words; Brigitte did not
appear to understand and kept on walking up and down.

"Do you know," I resumed, "that we have been together now six months?
The life we are leading together is not one to be laughed at. You are
young, I also; if this kind of life should become distasteful to you,
are you the woman to tell me of it? In truth, if it were so, I would
confess it to you frankly. And why not? Is it a crime to love? If not,
it is not a crime to love less or to cease to love at all. Would it be
astonishing if at our age we should feel the need of change?"

She stopped me.

"At our age!" said she. "Are you addressing me? What comedy are you now
playing, yourself?"

Blood mounted to my face. I seized her hand. "Sit down here," I said,
"and listen to me."

"What is the use? It is not you who speak."

I felt ashamed of my own strategy and abandoned it.

"Listen to me," I repeated, "and come, I beg of you, sit down near me.
If you wish to remain silent yourself, at least hear what I have to
say."

"I am listening, what have you to say to me?"

"If some one should say to me: 'You are a coward!' I, who am twenty-two
years of age and have fought on the field of honor, would throw
the taunt back in the teeth of my accuser. Have I not within me the
consciousness of what I am? It would be necessary for me to meet my
accuser on the field, and play my life against his; why? In order to
prove that I am not a coward; otherwise the world would believe it. That
single word demands that reply every time it is spoken, and it matters
not by whom."

"It is true; what is your meaning?"

"Women do not fight; but as society is constituted there is no being,
of whatever sex, who ought to submit to the indignity involved in an
aspersion on all his or her past life, be that life regulated as by a
pendulum. Reflect; who escapes that law? There are some, I admit;
but what happens? If it is a man, dishonor; if it is a woman, what?
Forgiveness? Every one who loves ought to give some evidence of life,
some proof of existence. There is, then, for woman as well as for man,
a time when an attack must be resented. If she is brav