ing me! I am quite willing. You are my friend, are
you not? I certainly can open the bottom of my heart to you; you will
see only one image there."

"Do you talk about our love to that man?"

"He is my confessor."

"Does he know that I love you?"

"M. de Montriveau, you cannot claim, I think, to penetrate the secrets
of the confessional?"

"Does that man know all about our quarrels and my love for you?"

"That man, monsieur; say God!"

"God again! _I_ ought to be alone in your heart. But leave God alone
where He is, for the love of God and me. Madame, you _shall not_ go to
confession again, or----"

"Or?" she repeated sweetly.

"Or I will never come back here."

"Then go, Armand. Good-bye, good-bye forever."

She rose and went to her boudoir without so much as a glance at Armand,
as he stood with his hand on the back of a chair. How long he stood
there motionless he himself never knew. The soul within has the
mysterious power of expanding as of contracting space.

He opened the door of the boudoir. It was dark within. A faint voice was
raised to say sharply:

"I did not ring. What made you come in without orders? Go away,
Suzette."

"Then you are ill," exclaimed Montriveau.

"Stand up, monsieur, and go out of the room for a minute at any rate,"
she said, ringing the bell.

"Mme la Duchesse rang for lights?" said the footman, coming in with the
candles. When the lovers were alone together, Mme de Langeais still lay
on her couch; she was just as silent and motionless as if Montriveau had
not been there.

"Dear, I was wrong," he began, a note of pain and a sublime kindness in
his voice. "Indeed, I would not have you without religion----"

"It is fortunate that you can recognise the necessity of a conscience,"
she said in a hard voice, without looking at him. "I thank you in God's
name."

The General was broken down by her harshness; this woman seemed as
if she could be at will a sister or a stranger to him. He made one
despairing stride towards the door. He would leave her forever without
another word. He was wretched; and the Duchess was laughing within
herself over mental anguish far more cruel than the old judicial
torture. But as for going away, it was not in his power to do it. In any
sort of crisis, a woman is, as it were, bursting with a certain quantity
of things to say; so long as she has not delivered herself of them,
she experiences the sensation which we are apt to feel at the sight of