uffer. The grandeur of their devotion dwarfs
us. Rising higher in the social scale, one finds just as much mud as at
the lower end; but with this difference, at the upper end it is hard and
gilded over.

"Yes, to find baseness in perfection, you must look for a noble bringing
up, a great name, a fair woman, a duchess. You cannot fall lower than
the lowest unless you are set high above the rest of the world.--I
express my thoughts badly; the wounds you dealt me are too painful as
yet, but do not think that I complain. My words are not the expression
of any hope for myself; there is no trace of bitterness in them. Know
this, madame, for a certainty--I forgive you. My forgiveness is so
complete that you need not feel in the least sorry that you came hither
to find it against your will.... But you might take advantage of other
hearts as child-like as my own, and it is my duty to spare them anguish.
So you have inspired the thought of justice. Expiate your sin here
on earth; God may perhaps forgive you; I wish that He may, but He is
inexorable, and will strike."

The broken-spirited, broken-hearted woman looked up, her eyes filled
with tears.

"Why do you cry? Be true to your nature. You could look on indifferently
at the torture of a heart as you broke it. That will do, madame, do not
cry. I cannot bear it any longer. Other men will tell you that you have
given them life; as for myself, I tell you, with rapture, that you have
given me blank extinction. Perhaps you guess that I am not my own, that
I am bound to live for my friends, that from this time forth I must
endure the cold chill of death, as well as the burden of life? Is it
possible that there can be so much kindness in you? Are you like the
desert tigress that licks the wounds she has inflicted?"

The Duchess burst out sobbing.

"Pray spare your tears, madame. If I believed in them at all, it would
merely set me on my guard. Is this another of your artifices? or is it
not? You have used so many with me; how can one think that there is any
truth in you? Nothing that you do or say has any power now to move me.
That is all I have to say."

Mme de Langeais rose to her feet, with a great dignity and humility in
her bearing.

"You are right to treat me very hardly," she said, holding out a hand to
the man who did not take it; "you have not spoken hardly enough; and I
deserve this punishment."

"_I_ punish you, madame! A man must love still, to punish, must he no