s, bathed in the setting sun. Our few
exclamatory words revealed the mutuality of the thoughts in which we
rested from our common sufferings. When language failed silence as
faithfully served our souls, which seemed to enter one another without
hindrance; together they luxuriated in the charms of pensive languor,
they met in the undulations of the same dream, they plunged as one into
the river and came out refreshed like two nymphs as closely united as
their souls could wish, but with no earthly tie to bind them. We entered
the unfathomable gulf, we returned to the surface with empty hands,
asking each other by a look, "Among all our days on earth will there be
one for us?"

In spite of the tranquil poetry of evening which gave to the bricks of
the balustrade their orange tones, so soothing and so pure; in spite of
the religious atmosphere of the hour, which softened the voices of the
children and wafted them towards us, desire crept through my veins like
the match to the bonfire. After three months of repression I was unable
to content myself with the fate assigned me. I took Henriette's hand and
softly caressed it, trying to convey to her the ardor that invaded me.
She became at once Madame de Mortsauf, and withdrew her hand; tears
rolled from my eyes, she saw them and gave me a chilling look, as she
offered her hand to my lips.

"You must know," she said, "that this will cause me grief. A friendship
that asks so great a favor is dangerous."

Then I lost my self-control; I reproached her, I spoke of my sufferings,
and the slight alleviation that I asked for them. I dared to tell her
that at my age, if the senses were all soul still the soul had a sex;
that I could meet death, but not with closed lips. She forced me to
silence with her proud glance, in which I seemed to read the cry of the
Mexican: "And I, am I on a bed of roses?" Ever since that day by the
gate of Frapesle, when I attributed to her the hope that our happiness
might spring from a grave, I had turned with shame from the thought of
staining her soul with the desires of a brutal passion. She now spoke
with honeyed lip, and told me that she never could be wholly mine, and
that I ought to know it. As she said the words I know that in obeying
her I dug an abyss between us. I bowed my head. She went on, saying she
had an inward religious certainty that she might love me as a brother
without offending God or man; such love was a living image of the divine
l