ame de Tecle, as if he were making a
display of fireworks in her honor. But on coming to her this was suddenly
extinguished, and he became all submission and respect.

Not every woman who receives from a superior man such delicate flattery
as this necessarily loves him, but she does like him. In the shadow of
the perfect security in which M. de Camors had placed her, Madame de
Tecle could not but be pleased in the company of the most distinguished
man she had ever met, who had, like herself, a taste for art, music, and
for high culture.

Thus these innocent relations with a young man whose reputation was
rather equivocal could not but awaken in the heart of Madame de Tecle a
sentiment, or rather an illusion, which the most prudish could not
condemn.

Libertines offer to vulgar women an attraction which surprises, but which
springs from a reprehensible curiosity. To a woman of society they offer
another, more noble yet not less dangerous--the attraction of reforming
them. It is rare that virtuous women do not fall into the error of
believing that it is for virtue's sake alone such men love them. These,
in brief, were the secret sympathies whose slight tendrils intertwined,
blossomed, and flowered little by little in this soul, as tender as it
was pure.

M. de Camors had vaguely foreseen all this: that which he had not
foreseen was that he himself would be caught in his own snare, and would
be sincere in the role which he had so judiciously adopted. From the
first, Madame de Tecle had captivated him. Her very puritanism, united
with her native grace and worldly elegance, composed a kind of daily
charm which piqued the imagination of the cold young man. If it was a
powerful temptation for the angels to save the tempted, the tempted could
not harbor with more delight the thought of destroying the angels. They
dream, like the reckless Epicureans of the Bible, of mingling, in a new
intoxication, the earth with heaven. To these sombre instincts of
depravity were soon united in the feelings of Camors a sentiment more
worthy of her. Seeing her every day with that childlike intimacy which
the country encourages--enhancing the graceful movements of this
accomplished person, ever self-possessed and equally prepared for duty or
for pleasure--as animated as passion, yet as severe as virtue--he
conceived for her a genuine worship. It was not respect, for that
requires the effort of believing in such merits, and he did not wish to