have taken as a standard of comparison. Indeed, if that great
child were to hesitate two seconds longer, every intelligent spectator
feels that he would ask Desdemona's forgiveness. Thus, killing the woman
is the act of a boy.--She wept as we parted, so much was she distressed
at being unable to nurse me herself. She wished she were my valet, in
whose happiness she found a cause of envy, and all this was as elegantly
expressed, oh! as Clarissa might have written in her happiness. There is
always a precious ape in the prettiest and most angelic woman!"

At these words all the women looked down, as if hurt by this brutal
truth so brutally stated.

"I will say nothing of the night, nor of the week I spent," de Marsay
went on. "I discovered that I was a statesman."

It was so well said that we all uttered an admiring exclamation.

"As I thought over the really cruel vengeance to be taken on a woman,"
said de Marsay, continuing his story, "with infernal ingenuity--for,
as we had loved each other, some terrible and irreparable revenges
were possible--I despised myself, I felt how common I was, I insensibly
formulated a horrible code--that of Indulgence. In taking vengeance on
a woman, do we not in fact admit that there is but one for us, that we
cannot do without her? And, then, is revenge the way to win her back? If
she is not indispensable, if there are other women in the world, why not
grant her the right to change which we assume?

"This, of course, applies only to passion; in any other sense it
would be socially wrong. Nothing more clearly proves the necessity for
indissoluble marriage than the instability of passion. The two sexes
must be chained up, like wild beasts as they are, by inevitable law,
deaf and mute. Eliminate revenge, and infidelity in love is nothing.
Those who believe that for them there is but one woman in the world must
be in favor of vengeance, and then there is but one form of it--that of
Othello.

"Mine was different."

The words produced in each of us the imperceptible movement which
newspaper writers represent in Parliamentary reports by the words:
_great sensation_.

"Cured of my cold, and of my pure, absolute, divine love, I flung myself
into an adventure, of which the heroine was charming, and of a style of
beauty utterly opposed to that of my deceiving angel. I took care not to
quarrel with this clever woman, who was so good an actress, for I doubt
whether true love can give such gra