them, but they
profoundly feel that they are fools if they are duped.

She was aware of the recent course of events; she had as she protested,
nothing to accuse herself of, and she could hardly part her lips without
a self-exculpation.

'It will fall on me!' she said to Tresten, in her emphatic tone. 'He will
have his interview with the girl. He will subdue the girl. He will
manacle himself in the chains he makes her wear. She will not miss her
chance! I am the object of her detestation. I am the price paid for their
reconcilement. She will seize her opportunity to vilipend me, and I shall
be condemned by the kind of court-martial which hurries over the forms of
a brial to sign the execution-warrant that makes it feel like justice.
You will see. She cannot forgive me for not pretending to enter into her
enthusiasm. She will make him believe I conspired against her. Men in
love are children with their mistresses--the greatest of them; their
heads are under the woman's feet. What have I not done to aid him! At his
instance, I went to the archbishop, to implore one of the princes of the
Church for succour. I knelt to an ecclesiastic. I did a ludicrous and a
shameful thing, knowing it in advance to be a barren farce. I obeyed his
wish. The tale will be laughable. I obeyed him. I would not have it on my
conscience that the commission of any deed ennomic, however unwonted, was
refused by me to serve Alvan. You are my witness, Tresten, that for a
young woman of common honesty I was ready to pack and march. Qualities of
mind-mind! They were out of the question. He had a taste for a wife. If
he had hit on a girl commonly honest, she might not have harmed him--the
contrary; cut his talons. What is this girl? Exactly what one might be
sure his appreciation, in woman-flesh, would lead him to fix on; a
daughter of the Philistines, naturally, and precisely the one of all on
earth likely to confound him after marriage as she has played fast and
loose with him before it. He has never understood women--cannot read
them. Could a girl like that keep a secret? She's a Cressida--a creature
of every camp! Not an idea of the cause he is vowed to! not a sentiment
in harmony with it! She is viler than any of those Berlin light o' loves
on the eve of Jena. Stable as a Viennese dancing slut home from
Mariazell! This is the girl-transparent to the whole world! But his heart
is on her, and he must have her, I suppose; and I shall have to bear her