ntimacy of each day.

There was something very touching to Madame de Tecle in the reserved and
timid manner of this 'mauvais sujet', in her presence--the homage of a
fallen spirit, as if ashamed of being such, in presence of a spirit of
light.

Never, either in public or when tete-a-tete, was there a jest, a word,
or a look which the most sensitive virtue could fear.

This young man, ironical with all the rest of the world, was serious
with her. From the moment he turned toward her, his voice, face, and
conversation became as serious as if he had entered a church. He had
a great deal of wit, and he used and abused it beyond measure in
conversations in the presence of Madame de Tecle, as if he were making
a display of fireworks in her honor. But on coming to her this was
suddenly extinguished, and he became all submission and respect.

Not every woman who receives from a superior man such delicate flattery
as this necessarily loves him, but she does like him. In the shadow of
the perfect security in which M. de Camors had placed her, Madame de
Tecle could not but be pleased in the company of the most distinguished
man she had ever met, who had, like herself, a taste for art, music, and
for high culture.

Thus these innocent relations with a young man whose reputation was
rather equivocal could not but awaken in the heart of Madame de Tecle
a sentiment, or rather an illusion, which the most prudish could not
condemn.

Libertines offer to vulgar women an attraction which surprises, but
which springs from a reprehensible curiosity. To a woman of society
they offer another, more noble yet not less dangerous--the attraction
of reforming them. It is rare that virtuous women do not fall into the
error of believing that it is for virtue's sake alone such men love
them. These, in brief, were the secret sympathies whose slight tendrils
intertwined, blossomed, and flowered little by little in this soul, as
tender as it was pure.

M. de Camors had vaguely foreseen all this: that which he had not
foreseen was that he himself would be caught in his own snare, and would
be sincere in the role which he had so judiciously adopted. From the
first, Madame de Tecle had captivated him. Her very puritanism, united
with her native grace and worldly elegance, composed a kind of daily
charm which piqued the imagination of the cold young man. If it was
a powerful temptation for the angels to save the tempted, the tempted
could not harbor