she feared to see him again so soon. She felt an
anguish which an unknown sentiment, profoundly soft, appeased. She did
not feel the stupor of the first time that she had yielded for love;
she did not feel the brusque vision of the irreparable. She was under
influences slower, more vague, and more powerful. This time a charming
reverie bathed the reminiscence of the caresses which she had received.
She was full of trouble and anxiety, but she felt no regret. She had
acted less through her will than through a force which she divined to
be higher. She absolved herself because of her disinterestedness. She
counted on nothing, having calculated nothing.

Doubtless, she had been wrong to yield, since she was not free; but she
had exacted nothing. Perhaps she was for him only a violent caprice.
She did not know him. She had not one of those vivid imaginations that
surpass immensely, in good as in evil, common mediocrity. If he went
away from her and disappeared she would not reproach him for it; at
least, she thought not. She would keep the reminiscence and the imprint
of the rarest and most precious thing one may find in the world. Perhaps
he was incapable of real attachment. He thought he loved her. He had
loved her for an hour. She dared not wish for more, in the embarrassment
of the false situation which irritated her frankness and her pride, and
which troubled the lucidity of her intelligence. While the carriage
was carrying her to San Marco, she persuaded herself that he would say
nothing to her of the day before, and that the room from which one could
see the pines rise to the sky would leave to them only the dream of a
dream.

He extended his hand to her. Before he had spoken she saw in his look
that he loved her as much now as before, and she perceived at the same
time that she wished him to be thus.

"You--" he said, "I have been here since noon. I was waiting, knowing
that you would not come so soon, but able to live only at the place
where I was to see you. It is you! Talk; let me see and hear you."

"Then you still love me?"

"It is now that I love you. I thought I loved you when you were only a
phantom. Now, you are the being in whose hands I have put my soul. It
is true that you are mine! What have I done to obtain the greatest, the
only, good of this world? And those men with whom the earth is covered
think they are living! I alone live! Tell me, what have I done to obtain
you?"

"Oh, what had to be do