or, the men began to quarrel; and I heard the old woman hurl a
torrent of vile insults at them. Rose took the part of one of the men
and interfered, using language as coarse as theirs.

3

It was late when I went away. The clouds had dispersed, the wind had
dropped; the moonbeams were making pools of silver on the ground through
the trees; and, when I reached the open fields, they appeared to me
cold, immense, infinite under a molten sky.

The picture which I carry away with me seems to lose its colour before
my eyes: it is harder and sadder, made up of harsh lights and darker
shadows, like an etching. I see the rough hands on the white deal table,
the bony faces brutally outlined by a crude light. I hear the cracked
voice of the old madwoman, now raised in yells of abuse, now breaking
into song ... and Rose ... my beautiful Rose....

But I have stolen this sight of a life which I was never meant to see.
The dishonesty of my invisible presence makes a gulf between my actual
vision and my perception; and it seems to me that, in this case, I must
withhold my judgment even as we hold our breath before a flickering
flame.

PART THE SECOND

CHAPTER I

1

There is in love, in friendship or in the curiosity that drives us
towards a fellow-creature a period of ascendency when nothing can quench
our enthusiasm. The fire that consumes us must burn itself out; until
then, all that we see, all that we discover feeds it and increases it.

We are aware of a blemish, but we do not see it. We know the weakness
that to-morrow perhaps will blight our joy, but we do not feel it. We
hear the word that ought to deal our hopes a mortal blow; and it does
not even touch them!... And our reason, which knows, sees, hears and
foresees, remains dumb, as though it delighted in these games which
bring into play our heart and our capacity for feeling. Besides, to us
women this exercise of the emotions is something so delightful and so
salutary that our will has neither the power nor the inclination to
check it either in its soberest or its most extravagant manifestations.
The influence of the will would always be commonplace and sordid by the
side of that generous force which is created by each impulse of the
heart or mind.

Upon every person or every idea that arouses our enthusiasm we have just
so much to bestow, a definite sum of energy to expend, which seems, like
that of our body, to have its own time and season. I hav