one commit a
crime."

She looked fixedly in his eyes, and replied:

"I should like to see that," and then left him, with superb nonchalance.

The General approached, and tapping the Count on the shoulder, said:

"Camors! you do not dance, as usual. Let us play a game of piquet."

"Willingly, General;" and traversing two or three salons they reached the
private boudoir of the Marquise. It was a small oval room, very lofty,
hung with thick red silk tapestry, covered with black and white flowers.
As the doors were removed, two heavy curtains isolated the room
completely from the neighboring gallery. It was there that the General
usually played cards and slept during his fetes. A small card-table was
placed before a divan. Except this addition, the boudoir preserved its
every-day aspect. Woman's work, half finished, books, journals, and
reviews were strewn upon the furniture. They played two or three games,
which the General won, as Camors was very abstracted.

"I reproach myself, young man," said the former, "in having kept you so
long away from the ladies. I give you back your liberty--I shall cast my
eye on the journals."

"There is nothing new in them, I think," said Camors, rising. He took up
a newspaper himself, and placing his back against the mantelpiece, warmed
his feet, one after the other. The General threw himself on the divan,
ran his eye over the 'Moniteur de l'Armee', approving of some military
promotions, and criticising others; and, little by little, he fell into a
doze, his head resting on his chest.

But Camors was not reading. He listened vaguely to the music of the
orchestra, and fell into a reverie. Through these harmonies, through the
murmurs and warm perfume of the ball, he followed, in thought, all the
evolutions of her who was mistress and queen of all. He saw her proud and
supple step--he heard her grave and musical voice--he felt her breath.

This young man had exhausted everything. Love and pleasure had no longer
for him secrets or temptations; but his imagination, cold and blase, had
arisen all inflamed before this beautiful, living, palpitating statue.
She was really for him more than a woman--more than a mortal. The antique
fables of amorous goddesses and drunken Bacchantes--the superhuman
voluptuousness unknown in terrestrial pleasures--were in reach of his
hand, separated from him only by the shadow of this sleeping old man. But
a shadow was ever between them--it was honor.

His