en who could understand me and pity me. No woman can
do it. The best and cleverest among you don't know what love is--as a man
feels it. It isn't the frenzy with You that it is with Us. It
acknowledges restraints in a woman--it bursts through everything in a
man. It robs him of his intelligence, his honor, his self-respect--it
levels him with the brutes--it debases him into idiocy--it lashes him
into madness. I tell you I am not accountable for my own actions. The
kindest thing you could do for me would be to shut me up in a madhouse.
The best thing I could do for myself would be to cut my throat.--Oh, yes!
this is a shocking way of talking, isn't it? I ought to struggle against
it--as you say. I ought to summon my self-control. Ha! ha! ha! Here is a
clever woman--here is an experienced woman. And yet--though she has seen
me in Lucilla's company hundreds of times--she has never once discovered
the signs of a struggle in me! From the moment when I first saw that
heavenly creature, it has been one long fight against myself, one
infernal torment of shame and remorse; and this clever friend of mine has
observed so little and knows so little, that she can only view my conduct
in one light--it is the conduct of a coward and a villain!"

He got up, and took a turn in the room. I was--naturally, I think--a
little irritated by his way of putting it. A man assuming to know more
about love than a woman! Was there ever such a monstrous perversion of
the truth as that? I appeal to the women!

"You ought to be the last person to blame me," I said. "I had too high an
opinion of you to suspect what was going on. I will never make the same
mistake again--I promise you that!"

He came back, and stood still in front of me, looking me hard in the
face.

"Do you really mean to say you saw nothing to set you thinking, on the
day when I first met her?" he asked. "You were there in the room--didn't
you see that she struck me dumb? Did you notice nothing suspicious at a
later time? When I was suffering martyrdom, if I only looked at her--was
there nothing to be seen in me which told its own tale?"

"I noticed that you were never at your ease with her," I replied. "But I
liked you and trusted you--and I failed to understand it. That's all."

"Did you fail to understand everything that followed? Didn't I speak to
her father? Didn't I try to hasten Oscar's marriage?"

It was true. He _had_ tried.

"When we first talked of his telling Lucil