l these
forms of egoism make common cause together.

She had said to this man, "I love you; I am yours!" Was it possible that
the Duchesse de Langeais should have uttered those words--in vain? She
must either be loved now or play her part of queen no longer. And then
she felt the loneliness of the luxurious couch where pleasure had never
yet set his glowing feet; and over and over again, while she tossed and
writhed there, she said, "I want to be loved."

But the belief that she still had in herself gave her hope of success.
The Duchess might be piqued, the vain Parisienne might be humiliated;
but the woman saw glimpses of wedded happiness, and imagination,
avenging the time lost for nature, took a delight in kindling the
inextinguishable fire in her veins. She all but attained to the
sensations of love; for amid her poignant doubt whether she was loved in
return, she felt glad at heart to say to herself, "I love him!" As for
her scruples, religion, and the world she could trample them under foot!
Montriveau was her religion now. She spent the next day in a state
of moral torpor, troubled by a physical unrest, which no words could
express. She wrote letters and tore them all up, and invented a thousand
impossible fancies.

When M. de Montriveau's usual hour arrived, she tried to think that he
would come, and enjoyed the feeling of expectation. Her whole life was
concentrated in the single sense of hearing. Sometimes she shut her
eyes, straining her ears to listen through space, wishing that she
could annihilate everything that lay between her and her lover, and so
establish that perfect silence which sounds may traverse from afar. In
her tense self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful
to her; she stopped its ill-omened garrulity. The twelve strokes of
midnight sounded from the drawing-room.

"Ah, God!" she cried, "to see him here would be happiness. And yet, it
is not so very long since he came here, brought by desire, and the tones
of his voice filled this boudoir. And now there is nothing."

She remembered the times that she had played the coquette with him, and
how that her coquetry had cost her her lover, and the despairing tears
flowed for long.

Her woman came at length with, "Mme la Duchesse does not know, perhaps,
that it is two o'clock in the morning; I thought that madame was not
feeling well."

"Yes, I am going to bed," said the Duchess, drying her eyes. "But
remember, Suzanne, never