n in Paris. Is it not, in fact, the
last resource of all atheistical societies? Raoul, as he sat there, had
decided that the moment had come to die. Despair is in proportion to our
hopes; that of Raoul had no other issue than the grave.

"What is the matter?" cried Marie, flying to him.

"Nothing," he answered.

There is one way of saying that word "nothing" between lovers which
signifies its exact contrary. Marie shrugged her shoulders.

"You are a child," she said. "Some misfortune has happened to you."

"No, not to me," he replied. "But you will know all soon enough, Marie,"
he added, affectionately.

"What were you thinking of when I came in?" she asked, in a tone of
authority.

"Do you want to know the truth?" She nodded. "I was thinking of you; I
was saying to myself that most men in my place would have wanted to be
loved without reserve. I am loved, am I not?"

"Yes," she answered.

"And yet," he said, taking her round the waist and kissing her forehead
at the risk of being seen, "I leave you pure and without remorse. I
could have dragged you into an abyss, but you remain in all your glory
on its brink without a stain. Yet one thought troubles me--"

"What is it?" she asked.

"You will despise me." She smiled superbly. "Yes, you will never believe
that I have sacredly loved you; I shall be disgraced, I know that. Women
never imagine that from the depths of our mire we raise our eyes to
heaven and truly adore a Marie. They assail that sacred love with
miserable doubts; they cannot believe that men of intellect and poesy
can so detach their soul from earthly enjoyment as to lay it pure upon
some cherished altar. And yet, Marie, the worship of the ideal is more
fervent in men then in women; we find it in women, who do not even look
for it in us."

"Why are you making me that article?" she said, jestingly.

"I am leaving France; and you will hear to-morrow, how and why, from a
letter my valet will bring you. Adieu, Marie."

Raoul left the house after again straining the countess to his heart
with dreadful pressure, leaving her stupefied and distressed.

"What is the matter, my dear?" said Madame d'Espard, coming to look for
her. "What has Monsieur Nathan been saying to you? He has just left
us in a most melodramatic way. Perhaps you are too reasonable or too
unreasonable with him."

The countess got into a hackney-coach and was driven rapidly to the
newspaper office. At that hour the huge apartmen