an when these are undertaken for love's sake and not for
vanity. Even now this making ready helped her to bear the long time of
waiting. A relapse of intense agitation set in when she was dressed; she
passed through nervous paroxysms brought on by the dreadful power which
sets the whole mind in ferment. Perhaps that power is only a disease,
though the pain of it is sweet. The Duchess was dressed and waiting
at two o clock in the afternoon. At half-past eleven that night M.
de Montriveau had not arrived. To try to give an idea of the anguish
endured by a woman who might be said to be the spoilt child of
civilization, would be to attempt to say how many imaginings the heart
can condense into one thought. As well endeavour to measure the forces
expended by the soul in a sigh whenever the bell rang; to estimate the
drain of life when a carriage rolled past without stopping, and left her
prostrate.

"Can he be playing with me?" she said, as the clocks struck midnight.

She grew white; her teeth chattered; she struck her hands together and
leapt up and crossed the boudoir, recollecting as she did so how often
he had come thither without a summons. But she resigned herself. Had she
not seen him grow pale, and start up under the stinging barbs of irony?
Then Mme de Langeais felt the horror of the woman's appointed lot; a
man's is the active part, a woman must wait passively when she loves. If
a woman goes beyond her beloved, she makes a mistake which few men can
forgive; almost every man would feel that a woman lowers herself by this
piece of angelic flattery. But Armand's was a great nature; he surely
must be one of the very few who can repay such exceeding love by love
that lasts forever.

"Well, I will make the advance," she told herself, as she tossed on her
bed and found no sleep there; "I will go to him. I will not weary myself
with holding out a hand to him, but I will hold it out. A man of a
thousand will see a promise of love and constancy in every step that a
woman takes towards him. Yes, the angels must come down from heaven to
reach men; and I wish to be an angel for him."

Next day she wrote. It was a billet of the kind in which the intellects
of the ten thousand Sevignes that Paris now can number particularly
excel. And yet only a Duchesse de Langeais, brought up by Mme la
Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, could have written that delicious note; no
other woman could complain without lowering herself; could spread w