e, your holy will be done! But
come, let there be all the pleasures of life in our love. Besides, I
will implore, I will weep and cry out and defend myself; perhaps I shall
be saved."

"Whom will your implore?" he asked.

"Silence!" said Paquita. "If I obtain mercy it will perhaps be on
account of my discretion."

"Give me my robe," said Henri, insidiously.

"No, no!" she answered quickly, "be what you are, one of those angels
whom I have been taught to hate, and in whom I only saw ogres, whilst
you are what is fairest under the skies," she said, caressing Henri's
hair. "You do not know how silly I am. I have learned nothing. Since I
was twelve years old I have been shut up without ever seeing any one. I
can neither read nor write, I can only speak English and Spanish."

"How is it, then, that you receive letters from London?"

"My letters?... See, here they are!" she said, proceeding to take some
papers out of a tall Japanese vase.

She offered De Marsay some letters, in which the young man saw, with
surprise, strange figures, similar to those of a rebus, traced in blood,
and illustrating phrases full of passion.

"But," he cried, marveling at these hieroglyphics created by the
alertness of jealousy, "you are in the power of an infernal genius?"

"Infernal," she repeated.

"But how, then, were you able to get out?"

"Ah!" she said, "that was my ruin. I drove Dona Concha to choose between
the fear of immediate death and anger to be. I had the curiosity of
a demon, I wished to break the bronze circle which they had described
between creation and me, I wished to see what young people were like,
for I knew nothing of man except the Marquis and Cristemio. Our coachman
and the lackey who accompanies us are old men...."

"But you were not always thus shut up? Your health...?"

"Ah," she answered, "we used to walk, but it was at night and in the
country, by the side of the Seine, away from people."

"Are you not proud of being loved like that?"

"No," she said, "no longer. However full it be, this hidden life is but
darkness in comparison with the light."

"What do you call the light?"

"Thee, my lovely Adolphe! Thee, for whom I would give my life. All the
passionate things that have been told me, and that I have inspired, I
feel for thee! For a certain time I understood nothing of existence, but
now I know what love is, and hitherto I have been the loved one only;
for myself, I did not love. I would give