d,
and said in a voice broken by emotion, 'Well, Henri, you are loyal,
noble, and a charming man; I shall never forget you.'

"These were admirable tactics. She was bewitching in this transition
of feeling, indispensable to the situation in which she wished to place
herself in regard to me. I fell into the attitude, the manners, and the
look of a man so deeply distressed, that I saw her too newly assumed
dignity giving way; she looked at me, took my hand, drew me along
almost, threw me on the sofa, but quite gently, and said after a
moment's silence, 'I am dreadfully unhappy, my dear fellow. Do you love
me?'--'Oh! yes.'--'Well, then, what will become of you?'"

At this point the women all looked at each other.

"Though I can still suffer when I recall her perfidy, I still laugh at
her expression of entire conviction and sweet satisfaction that I must
die, or at any rate sink into perpetual melancholy," de Marsay went on.
"Oh! do not laugh yet!" he said to his listeners; "there is better to
come. I looked at her very tenderly after a pause, and said to her,
'Yes, that is what I have been wondering.'--'Well, what will you
do?'--'I asked myself that the day after my cold.'--'And----?' she asked
with eager anxiety.--'And I have made advances to the little lady to
whom I was supposed to be attached.'

"Charlotte started up from the sofa like a frightened doe, trembling
like a leaf, gave me one of those looks in which women forgo all their
dignity, all their modesty, their refinement, and even their grace, the
sparkling glitter of a hunted viper's eye when driven into a corner, and
said, 'And I have loved this man! I have struggled! I have----' On this
last thought, which I leave you to guess, she made the most impressive
pause I ever heard.--'Good God!' she cried, 'how unhappy are we women!
we never can be loved. To you there is nothing serious in the
purest feelings. But never mind; when you cheat us you still are our
dupes!'--'I see that plainly,' said I, with a stricken air; 'you have
far too much wit in your anger for your heart to suffer from it.'--This
modest epigram increased her rage; she found some tears of vexation.
'You disgust me with the world and with life.' she said; 'you snatch
away all my illusions; you deprave my heart.'

"She said to me all that I had a right to say to her, and with a simple
effrontery, an artless audacity, which would certainly have nailed any
man but me on the spot.--'What is to bec