r perverted selfness, all things have relationship to
her own ego, and so she is in continual trouble, like a girl whose love
is being opposed by parents and kinsmen.

A woman in love is the most unreasonable of all created things--next to
a man. Reason is actually beyond a lover's orbit. This woman has lost
the focus of truth, and all things are out of perspective. Every object
is twisted and distorted by the one thought that fills her life. Lovers
are fools, but Nature makes them so.

Here is a woman whose elective affinity is a being of her own
creation--an airy, fairy fiction of the mind. When a living man appears
upon the scene who in degree approximates her ideal of gentleness,
strength and truth, how long, think you, will the citadel of her heart
withstand the siege? Or will it be necessary for him to lay siege to her
heart at all? Will she not straightway throw the silken net of her
personality over him--this personality she affects to despise--and take
him captive hand and foot? We shall see:

It was after this, my husband, having some relief from his continual
illness, wished to go to Orleans, and thence to Touraine. On this
journey my vanity triumphed, to disappear forever.

I received many visits and much applause. My God, how clearly I can
see the folly of men, who let themselves be caught by vain beauty! I
hated passion, but, according to the external man, I could not hate
that in me which called me into life, although, according to the
interior man, I ardently desired to be delivered from it. O my God,
you know how this continued combat of Nature and of Grace made me
suffer. Nature was pleased at public approbation, and Grace made it
feared. I felt myself torn asunder and as if separated from myself;
for I very well felt the injury this universal esteem did me. What
augmented it was the virtue they believed united with my youth and
my appearance. O my God, they did not know that all the virtue was
in you alone, and in your protection, and all the weakness in me.

I told the confessors of my trouble, because I had not my neck
entirely covered, although I was much better than the other women of
my age. They assured me that I was dressed very modestly, and that
there was no harm. My internal director told me quite the contrary,
but I had not the strength to follow him, and to dress myself, at my
age, in a manner that woul