aid their debt to implacable love, who
thought that they were strong and free from those passions under the
influence of which men lose their heads, and that they were beyond the
reach of woman's perfidious snares. Or, perhaps, it was her small, soft,
delicate, white hands, which always smelled of some subtle, delicious
perfume, and whose small fingers men kissed almost with devotion, almost
with absolute pleasure. Or, was it her silky, golden hair, her large,
blue eyes, full of enigmas, of curiosity, of desire, her changeable
mouth, which was quite small and infantine at one moment, when she was
pouting, and smiling and as open as a rose that is unfolding in the sun,
when she opened it in a laugh, and showed her pearly teeth, so that it
became a target for kisses? Who will ever be able to explain that kind
of magic and sorcery which some _Chosen Women_ exercise over all men,
that despotic authority, against which nobody would think of rebelling?

Among the numerous men who had entreated her, who were anxiously waiting
for that wonderful moment when her heart would beat, when his mocking
companion would grow tired and abandon herself to the pleasure of loving
and of being loved, would become intoxicated with the honey of caresses,
and would no longer refuse her lips to kisses, like some restive animal
that fears the yoke, none had so made up his mind to win the game, and
to pursue this deceptive siege, as much as Xavier de Fontrailles. He
marched straight for his object with a patient energy and a strength of
will which no checks could weaken, and with the ardent fervor of a
believer who has started on a long pilgrimage, and who supports all the
suffering of the long journey with the fixed and consoling idea that one
day he will be able to throw himself on his knees at the shrine where he
wishes to worship, and to listen to the divine words which will be a
Paradise to him.

He gave way to Madame d'Ormonde's slightest whims, and did all he could
never to bore her, never to hurt her feelings, but really to become a
friend whom she could not do without, and of whom, in the end, a woman
grows more jealous than she does of her husband, and to whom she
confesses everything, her daily worries and her dreams of the future.

She would very likely have suffered and wept, and have felt a great void
in her existence if they had separated for ever, if he had disappeared,
and she would not have hesitated to defend him, even at the r