sh all that I made you suffer by my
coquetry; but in those days I was utterly ignorant of love. _You_ know
what the torture is, and you mete it out to me! During those first eight
months that you gave me you never roused any feeling of love in me. Do
you ask why this was so, my friend? I can no more explain it than I can
tell you why I love you now. Oh! certainly it flattered my vanity that I
should be the subject of your passionate talk, and receive those burning
glances of yours; but you left me cold. No, I was not a woman; I had
no conception of womanly devotion and happiness. Who was to blame? You
would have despised me, would you not, if I had given myself without
the impulse of passion? Perhaps it is the highest height to which we
can rise--to give all and receive no joy; perhaps there is no merit in
yielding oneself to bliss that is foreseen and ardently desired. Alas,
my friend, I can say this now; these thoughts came to me when I played
with you; and you seemed to me so great even then that I would not have
you owe the gift to pity----What is this that I have written?

"I have taken back all my letters; I am flinging them one by one on the
fire; they are burning. You will never know what they confessed--all the
love and the passion and the madness----

"I will say no more, Armand; I will stop. I will not say another word of
my feelings. If my prayers have not echoed from my soul through yours,
I also, woman that I am, decline to owe your love to your pity. It is my
wish to be loved, because you cannot choose but love me, or else to
be left without mercy. If you refuse to read this letter, it shall be
burnt. If, after you have read it, you do not come to me within three
hours, to be henceforth forever my husband, the one man in the world for
me; then I shall never blush to know that this letter is in your hands,
the pride of my despair will protect my memory from all insult, and my
end shall be worthy of my love. When you see me no more on earth, albeit
I shall still be alive, you yourself will not think without a shudder
of the woman who, in three hours' time, will live only to overwhelm
you with her tenderness; a woman consumed by a hopeless love, and
faithful--not to memories of past joys--but to a love that was slighted.

"The Duchesse de la Valliere wept for lost happiness and vanished power;
but the Duchesse de Langeais will be happy that she may weep and be a
power for you still. Yes, you will regret me.