soul, ravished,
would glory in its giddy flight?

Ah, the lesson was hard and decisive. For having one time hoped so much,
what regrets, what a tumble! Decidedly, Reality does not pardon him who
despises her; she avenges herself by shattering the dream and trampling
it and casting the fragments into a cesspool.

"Don't be vexed, dear, because it is taking me so long," said Mme.
Chantelouve behind the curtain.

He thought crudely, "I wish you would get to hell out of here," and
aloud he asked politely if she had need of his services.

"She was so mysterious, so enticing," he resumed to himself. "Her eyes,
remote, deep as space, and reflecting cemeteries and festivals at the
same time. And she has shown herself up for all she is, within an hour.
I have seen a new Hyacinthe, talking like a silly little milliner in
heat. All the nastinesses of women unite in her to exasperate me."

After a thoughtful silence he concluded, "I must be young indeed to have
lost my head the way I did."

As if echoing his thought, Mme. Chantelouve, coming out through the
portiere, laughed nervously and said, "A woman of my age doing a mad
thing like that!" She looked at him, and though he forced a smile she
understood.

"You will sleep tonight," she said, sadly, alluding to Durtal's former
complaints of sleeplessness on her account.

He begged her to sit down and warm herself, but she said she was not
cold.

"Why, in spite of the warmth of the room you were cold as ice!"

"Oh, I am always that way. Winter and summer my flesh is chilly."

He thought that in August this frigid body might be agreeable, but now!

He offered her some bonbons, which she refused, then she said she would
take a sip of the alkermes, which he poured into a tiny silver goblet.
She took just a drop, and amicably they discussed the taste of this
preparation, in which she recognized an aroma of clove, tempered by
flower of cinnamon moistened with distillate of rose water.

Then he became silent.

"My poor dear," she said, "how I should love him if he were more
confiding and not always on his guard."

He asked her to explain herself.

"Why, I mean that you can't forget yourself and simply let yourself be
loved. Alas, you were reasoning all the time--"

"I was not!"

She kissed him tenderly. "You see I love you, anyway." And he was
surprised to see how sad and moved she looked, and he observed a sort of
frightened gratitude in her eyes.

"She is easily