have merely been coquetting with me, and----"

"Coquetting?" she repeated. "I detest coquetry. A coquette Armand, makes
promises to many, and gives herself to none; and a woman who keeps such
promises is a libertine. This much I believed I had grasped of our code.
But to be melancholy with humorists, gay with the frivolous, and politic
with ambitious souls; to listen to a babbler with every appearance
of admiration, to talk of war with a soldier, wax enthusiastic with
philanthropists over the good of the nation, and to give to each one his
little dole of flattery--it seems to me that this is as much a matter of
necessity as dress, diamonds, and gloves, or flowers in one's hair. Such
talk is the moral counterpart of the toilette. You take it up and lay it
aside with the plumed head-dress. Do you call this coquetry? Why, I have
never treated you as I treat everyone else. With you, my friend, I am
sincere. Have I not always shared your views, and when you convinced me
after a discussion, was I not always perfectly glad? In short, I love
you, but only as a devout and pure woman may love. I have thought it
over. I am a married woman, Armand. My way of life with M. de Langeais
gives me liberty to bestow my heart; but law and custom leave me no
right to dispose of my person. If a woman loses her honour, she is
an outcast in any rank of life; and I have yet to meet with a single
example of a man that realizes all that our sacrifices demand of him in
such a case. Quite otherwise. Anyone can foresee the rupture between Mme
de Beauseant and M. d'Ajuda (for he is going to marry Mlle de Rochefide,
it seems), that affair made it clear to my mind that these very
sacrifices on the woman's part are almost always the cause of the man's
desertion. If you had loved me sincerely, you would have kept away for a
time.--Now, I will lay aside all vanity for you; is not that something?
What will not people say of a woman to whom no man attaches himself?
Oh, she is heartless, brainless, soulless; and what is more, devoid
of charm! Coquettes will not spare me. They will rob me of the very
qualities that mortify them. So long as my reputation is safe, what do I
care if my rivals deny my merits? They certainly will not inherit them.
Come, my friend; give up something for her who sacrifices so much for
you. Do not come quite so often; I shall love you none the less."

"Ah!" said Armand, with the profound irony of a wounded heart in his
words and tone