he had come thither without a summons. But she resigned herself. Had she
not seen him grow pale, and start up under the stinging barbs of irony?
Then Mme de Langeais felt the horror of the woman's appointed lot; a
man's is the active part, a woman must wait passively when she loves. If
a woman goes beyond her beloved, she makes a mistake which few men can
forgive; almost every man would feel that a woman lowers herself by this
piece of angelic flattery. But Armand's was a great nature; he surely
must be one of the very few who can repay such exceeding love by love
that lasts forever.

"Well, I will make the advance," she told herself, as she tossed on her
bed and found no sleep there; "I will go to him. I will not weary myself
with holding out a hand to him, but I will hold it out. A man of a
thousand will see a promise of love and constancy in every step that a
woman takes towards him. Yes, the angels must come down from heaven to
reach men; and I wish to be an angel for him."

Next day she wrote. It was a billet of the kind in which the intellects
of the ten thousand Sevignes that Paris now can number particularly
excel. And yet only a Duchesse de Langeais, brought up by Mme la
Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, could have written that delicious note; no
other woman could complain without lowering herself; could spread wings
in such a flight without draggling her pinions in humiliation; rise
gracefully in revolt; scold without giving offence; and pardon without
compromising her personal dignity.

Julien went with the note. Julien, like his kind, was the victim of
love's marches and countermarches.

"What did M. de Montriveau reply?" she asked, as indifferently as she
could, when the man came back to report himself.

"M. le Marquis requested me to tell Mme la Duchesse that it was all
right."

Oh the dreadful reaction of the soul upon herself! To have her heart
stretched on the rack before curious witnesses; yet not to utter a
sound, to be forced to keep silence! One of the countless miseries of
the rich!

More than three weeks went by. Mme de Langeais wrote again and again,
and no answer came from Montriveau. At last she gave out that she was
ill, to gain a dispensation from attendance on the Princess and from
social duties. She was only at home to her father the Duc de Navarreins,
her aunt the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, the old Vidame de Pamiers
(her maternal great-uncle), and to her husband's uncle, the Duc de