to keep me at a distance, how often she
had hoped that I should detect her notwithstanding her
efforts, how at every sound that fell on her ears she had
hoped for my arrival; what trouble, joy, and fear she had
felt on seeing me again; how she had distrusted herself, and
how, to unite prudence and inclination, she had sought once
more the distractions of society and the crowds which she
formerly avoided. I made her repeat the smallest details,
and this history of a few weeks seemed to us the history of
a whole life. Love makes up, as it were by magic, for the
absence of far-reaching memory. All other affections have
need of the past: love, as by enchantment, makes its own
past and throws it round us. It gives us the feeling of
having lived for years with one who yesterday was all but a
stranger. Itself a mere point of light, it dominates and
illuminates all time. A little while and it was not: a
little while and it will be no more: but, as long as it
exists, its light is reflected alike on the past and on the
future.

This calm, he goes on to say, lasted but a short time; and, indeed, no
one who has read the book so far is likely to suppose that it did.
Adolphe has entered into the _liaison_ to play the game, Ellenore
(unluckily for herself) to be loved. The difference soon brings discord.
In the earlier Sensibility days men and women were nearly on equal
terms. It was only in the most strictly metaphorical way that the
unhappy lover was bound to expire, and his beloved rarely took the
method of wringing his bosom recommended by Goldsmith, when anybody else
of proper Sensibility was there to console her. But the game had become
unequal between the Charlottes and the Werthers, the Adolphes and the
Ellenores. The Count de P---- naturally perceives the state of affairs
before long, and as naturally does not like it. Adolphe, having played
his game and won it, does not care to go on playing for love merely.
"Ellenore etait sans doute un vif plaisir dans mon existence, mais elle
n'etait pas plus un but--elle etait devenue un lien." But Ellenore does
not see this accurate distinction. After many vicissitudes and a few
scenes ("Nous vecumes ainsi quatre mois dans des rapports forces,
quelque fois doux, jamais completement libres, y rencontrant encore du
plaisir mais n'y trouvant plus de charme") a crisis comes. The Count
forbids Ellenor