st as the power to love
developed and grew strong and active, a legitimate channel for
the affections of her nature was denied her, and wedded love was
extinguished in grave physical and mental sufferings. Add to this that
she now felt for her husband that pity closely bordering upon contempt,
which withers all affection at last. Even if she had not learned from
conversations with some of her friends, from examples in life, from
sundry occurrences in the great world, that love can bring ineffable
bliss, her own wounds would have taught her to divine the pure and deep
happiness which binds two kindred souls each to each.

In the picture which her memory traced of the past, Arthur's frank face
stood out daily nobler and purer; it was but a flash, for upon that
recollection she dared not dwell. The young Englishman's shy, silent
love for her was the one event since her marriage which had left a
lingering sweetness in her darkened and lonely heart. It may be that all
the blighted hopes, all the frustrated longings which gradually clouded
Julie's mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of imagination, about
this man--whose manners, sentiments, and character seemed to have so
much in common with her own. This idea still presented itself to her
mind fitfully and vaguely, like a dream; yet from that dream, which
always ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater wretchedness, to keener
consciousness of the latent anguish brooding beneath her imaginary
bliss.

Occasionally her self-pity took wilder and more daring flights. She
determined to have happiness at any cost; but still more often she lay a
helpless victim of an indescribable numbing stupor, the words she heard
had no meaning to her, or the thoughts which arose in her mind were so
vague and indistinct that she could not find language to express them.
Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred harshly upon her
girlish dreams of life, but she was obliged to devour her tears. To
whom could she make complaint? Of whom be understood? She possessed,
moreover, that highest degree of woman's sensitive pride, the exquisite
delicacy of feeling which silences useless complainings and declines to
use an advantage to gain a triumph which can only humiliate both victor
and vanquished.

Julie tried to endow M. d'Aiglemont with her own abilities and virtues,
flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the happiness lacking in
her lot. All her woman's ingenuity and tack was emp