admitted you to their favour you have despised them."

"Pray do not use the word 'despise,' or I shall suppose you think me a
monster. Beauty seduces me. I aspire to its possession, and it is only
when it is given me from other motives than love that I despise it. How
should I despise one who loved me? I should first be compelled to despise
myself. You are beautiful and I worship you, but you are mistaken if you
think that I should be content for you to surrender yourself to me out of
mere kindness."

"Ah! I see it is my heart you want."

"Exactly."

"To make me wretched at the end of a fortnight."

"To love you till death, and to obey your slightest wishes."

"My slightest wishes?"

"Yes, for to me they would be inviolable laws."

"Would you settle in Milan?"

"Certainly, if you made that a condition of my happiness."

"What amuses me in all this is that you are deceiving me without knowing
it, if indeed you really love me."

"Deceiving you without knowing it! That is something new. If I am not
aware of it, I am innocent of deceit."

"I am willing to admit your innocency, but you are deceiving me none the
less, for after you had ceased to love me no power of yours could bring
love back again."

"That, of course, might happen, but I don't choose to entertain such
unpleasant thoughts; I prefer to think of myself as loving you to all
eternity. It is certain at all events that no other woman in Milan has
attracted me."

"Not the pretty girl who waited on us, and whose arms you have possibly
left an hour or, two ago?"

"What are you saying? She is the wife of the tailor who made your
clothes. She left directly after you, and her husband would not have
allowed her to come at all if he was not aware that she would be wanted
to wait on the ladies whose dresses he had made."

"She is wonderfully pretty. Is it possible that you are not in love with
her?"

"How could one love a woman who is at the disposal of a low, ugly fellow?
The only pleasure she gave me was by talking of you this morning."

"Of me?"

"Yes. You will excuse me if I confess to having asked her which of the
ladies she waited on looked handsomest without her chemise."

"That was a libertine's question. Well, what did she say?"

"That the lady with the beautiful hair was perfect in every respect."

"I don't believe a word of it. I have learnt how to change my chemise
with decency, and so as not to shew anything I might not shew a man. S