hope which, never culminating
in satisfaction, leaves to the soul its virginity. To grant nothing
to duty or the law, to be guided entirely by one's own will, retaining
perfect independence--what could be more attractive, more honorable?

A contract of this kind, directly opposed to the legal contract, and
even to the sacrament itself, could be concluded only between Louis and
me. This difficulty, the first which has arisen, is the only one which
has delayed the completion of our marriage. Although, at first, I
may have made up my mind to accept anything rather than return to the
convent, it is only in human nature, having got an inch, to ask for an
ell, and you and I, sweet love, are of those who would have it all.

I watched Louis out of the corner of my eye, and put it to myself, "Has
suffering had a softening or a hardening effect on him?" By dint of
close study, I arrived at the conclusion that his love amounted to a
passion. Once transformed into an idol, whose slightest frown would turn
him white and trembling, I realized that I might venture anything. I
drew him aside in the most natural manner on solitary walks, during
which I discreetly sounded his feelings. I made him talk, and got him to
expound to me his ideas and plans for our future. My questions betrayed
so many preconceived notions, and went so straight for the weak points
in this terrible dual existence, that Louis has since confessed to me
the alarm it caused him to find in me so little of the ignorant maiden.

Then I listened to what he had to say in reply. He got mixed up in his
arguments, as people do when handicapped by fear; and before long it
became clear that chance had given me for adversary one who was the
less fitted for the contest because he was conscious of what you
magniloquently call my "greatness of soul." Broken by sufferings and
misfortune, he looked on himself as a sort of wreck, and three fears in
especial haunted him.

First, we are aged respectively thirty-seven and seventeen; and he could
not contemplate without quaking the twenty years that divide us. In the
next place, he shares our views on the subject of my beauty, and it is
cruel for him to see how the hardships of his life have robbed him
of youth. Finally, he felt the superiority of my womanhood over his
manhood. The consciousness of these three obvious drawbacks made him
distrustful of himself; he doubted his power to make me happy, and
guessed that he had been chosen