pproached the mantel-piece. She was leaning
her elbow upon it, her forehead on her hand, all palpitating and
excited. Intimidated for, perhaps, the first time in her life,
she turned away her great blue eyes, as if afraid that they should
betray a reflex of her thoughts.

As to M. de Tregars, he remained at his place, not having one whit
too much of that power of self-control, which is acquired by a long
experience of the world, to conceal his impressions. If he had a
fault, it was certainly not self-conceit; but Mlle. de Thaller had
been too explicit and too clear to leave him a doubt. All she
had said could be comprised in one sentence,

"My parents were in hopes that I would become your wife: I had
judged you well enough to understand their error. Precisely because
I love you I acknowledge myself unworthy of you and I wish you to
know that if you had asked my hand,--the hand of a girl who has
a dowry of a million--I would have ceased to esteem you."

That such a feeling should have budded and blossomed in Mlle.
Cesarine's soul, withered as it was by vanity, and blunted by
pleasure was almost a miracle. It was, at any rate, an astonishing
proof of love which she gave; and Marius de Tregars would not have
been a man, if he had not been deeply moved by it. Suddenly,

"What a miserable wretch I am!" she uttered.

"You mean unhappy," said M. de Tregars gently.

"What can you think of my sincerity? You must, doubtless, find it
strange, impudent, grotesque."

He lifted his hand in protest; for she gave him no time to put in
a word.

"And yet," she went on, "this is not the first time that I am assailed
by sinister ideas, and that I feel ashamed of myself. I was
convinced once that this mad existence of mine is the only enviable
one, the only one that can give happiness. And now I discover that
it is not the right path which I have taken, or, rather, which
I have been made to take. And there is no possibility of retracing
my steps."

She turned pale, and, in an accent of gloomy despair,

"Every thing fails me," she said. "It seems as though I were rolling
into a bottomless abyss, without a branch or a tuft of grass to
cling to. Around me, emptiness, night, chaos. I am not yet twenty
and it seems to me that I have lived thousands of years, and
exhausted every sensation. I have seen every thing, learned every
thing, experienced every thing; and I am tired of every thing, and
satiated and nauseated.