however alluring, whether we stood or whether we walked, there was
nothing either tender or lover-like. When I tried to share in a measure
the action of movement prompted by her life, I became aware of a check,
or of something strange in her that I cannot explain, or an inner
activity concealed in her nature. There is no suavity about the
movements of women who have no soul in them. Our wills were opposed,
and we did not keep step together. Words are wanting to describe this
outward dissonance between two beings; we are not accustomed to read
a thought in a movement. We instinctively feel this phenomenon of our
nature, but it cannot be expressed.

"I did not dissect my sensations during those violent seizures of
passion," Raphael went on, after a moment of silence, as if he were
replying to an objection raised by himself. "I did not analyze my
pleasures nor count my heartbeats then, as a miser scrutinizes and
weighs his gold pieces. No; experience sheds its melancholy light over
the events of the past to-day, and memory brings these pictures back,
as the sea-waves in fair weather cast up fragment after fragment of the
debris of a wrecked vessel upon the strand.

"'It is in your power to render me a rather important service,' said the
countess, looking at me in an embarrassed way. 'After confiding in you
my aversion to lovers, I feel myself more at liberty to entreat your
good offices in the name of friendship. Will there not be very much more
merit in obliging me to-day?' she asked, laughing.

"I looked at her in anguish. Her manner was coaxing, but in no wise
affectionate; she felt nothing for me; she seemed to be playing a part,
and I thought her a consummate actress. Then all at once my hopes awoke
once more, at a single look and word. Yet if reviving love expressed
itself in my eyes, she bore its light without any change in the
clearness of her own; they seemed, like a tiger's eyes, to have a sheet
of metal behind them. I used to hate her in such moments.

"'The influence of the Duc de Navarreins would be very useful to me,
with an all-powerful person in Russia,' she went on, persuasion in every
modulation of her voice, 'whose intervention I need in order to have
justice done me in a matter that concerns both my fortune and my
position in the world, that is to say, the recognition of my marriage
by the Emperor. Is not the Duc de Navarreins a cousin of yours? A letter
from him would settle everything.'

"'I am y