hich I have been meditating night and day.
I feel within me a strange craving for the unknown, or, if you will, the
forbidden, which makes me uneasy and reveals a conflict in progress in
my soul between the laws of society and of nature. I cannot tell whether
nature in me is the stronger of the two, but I surprise myself in the
act of meditating between the hostile powers.

In plain words, what I wanted was to speak with Felipe, alone, at night,
under the lime-trees at the bottom of our garden. There is no denying
that this desire beseems the girl who has earned the epithet of an
"up-to-date young lady," bestowed on me by the Duchess in jest, and
which my father has approved.

Yet to me there seems a method in this madness. I should recompense
Felipe for the long nights he has passed under my window, at the same
time that I should test him, by seeing what he thinks of my escapade and
how he comports himself at a critical moment. Let him cast a halo round
my folly--behold in him my husband; let him show one iota
less of the tremulous respect with which he bows to me in the
Champs-Elysees--farewell, Don Felipe.

As for society, I run less risk in meeting my lover thus than when I
smile to him in the drawing-rooms of Mme. de Maufrigneuse and the old
Marquise de Beauseant, where spies now surround us on every side; and
Heaven only knows how people stare at the girl, suspected of a weakness
for a grotesque, like Macumer.

I cannot tell you to what a state of agitation I am reduced by dreaming
of this idea, and the time I have given to planning its execution. I
wanted you badly. What happy hours we should have chattered away, lost
in the mazes of uncertainty, enjoying in anticipation all the delights
and horrors of a first meeting in the silence of night, under the noble
lime-trees of the Chaulieu mansion, with the moonlight dancing through
the leaves! As I sat alone, every nerve tingling, I cried, "Oh! Renee,
where are you?" Then your letter came, like a match to gunpowder, and my
last scruples went by the board.

Through the window I tossed to my bewildered adorer an exact tracing of
the key of the little gate at the end of the garden, together with this
note:

"Your madness must really be put a stop to. If you broke your
neck, you would ruin the reputation of the woman you profess to
love. Are you worthy of a new proof of regard, and do you deserve
that I should talk with you under the limes at the foot of t