onestly and frankly I confess the
fault. I have examined my heart during the whole of the last sleepless
night, and I confess that I love you. Now, then, understand me--we meet
no more."

"What!" said Maltravers, falling involuntarily at her feet, and seeking
to detain her hand, which he seized. "What! now, when you have given
life a new charm, will you as suddenly blast it? No, Valerie; no, I will
not listen to you."

Madame de Ventadour rose and said, with a cold dignity: "Hear me calmly,
or I quit the room; and all I would now say rests for ever unspoken."

Maltravers rose also, folded his arms haughtily, bit his lips, and stood
erect, and confronting Valerie rather in the attitude of an accuser than
a suppliant.

"Madame," said he, gravely, "I will offend no more; I will trust to your
manner, since I may not believe your words."

"You are cruel," said Valerie, smiling mournfully; "but so are all
men. Now let me make myself understood. I was betrothed to Monsieur
de Ventadour in my childhood. I did not see him till a month before we
married. I had no choice. French girls have none. We were wed. I had
formed no other attachment. I was proud and vain: wealth, ambition, and
social rank for a time satisfied my faculties and my heart. At length
I grew restless and unhappy. I felt that something of life was wanting.
Monsieur de Ventadour's sister was the first to recommend me to the
common resource of our sex--at least, in France--a lover. I was shocked
and startled, for I belong to a family in which women are chaste and men
brave. I began, however, to look around me, and examine the truth of the
philosophy of vice. I found that no woman, who loved honestly and deeply
an illicit lover was happy. I found, too, the hideous profundity of
Rochefoucauld's maxim that a woman--I speak of French women--may live
without a lover; but, a lover once admitted, she never goes through
life with only one. She is deserted; she cannot bear the anguish and the
solitude; she fills up the void with a second idol. For her there is no
longer a fall from virtue: it is a gliding and involuntary descent
from sin to sin, till old age comes on and leaves her without love and
without respect. I reasoned calmly, for my passions did not blind my
reason. I could not love the egotists around me. I resolved upon my
career; and now, in temptation, I will adhere to it. Virtue is my lover,
my pride, my comfort, my life of life. Do you love me, and will y