ions inclined. There
was the soul and the body; happiness and life, sacred symbolical wedlock,
the chosen vessel, the nubile maid ready for the husband. And he murmured
the Song of Songs:

"Let her kiss me with kisses of her mouth,
For her teats are better than wine."

And it was at the very moment when he was about perhaps to be able to taste
this exquisite cup, that he must go away. Go away! that is to say, leave
her, she who had just cast a ray into his life. Go away, to obey a culpable
ambition; to lose for ever this ravishing young girl! And the promises
which he had made to himself; and the unsatisfied desires, and the
boundless joys, the delicious troubles, the sweet evening talks, the hand
sometimes squeezed in a moment of audacity; of all that but the memory
would remain. Of all the intoxications of soul, of heart, of sense; of all
those joys which should repay him for his wasted youth, for his fair years
lost, he would preserve but remorse ... remorse for having so senselessly
let them go.

And all at once in the whirlwind of his ideas, he seized one as it passed
by. He noticed during the day the Captain entering the _diligence_ for Vic.
It was, in fact, the time at which he drew his pay. He could not return
till the following day. Suzanne then was alone with the old maid-servant.
She went to bed late, he knew; perhaps she was still awake. He looked at
his watch, it was not yet eleven o'clock; he still had a chance of seeing
her. He cherished this idea; it pleased him and he was surprised that he
had not thought of it before. Yes, certainly, he must see her, in order
that she might keep the remembrance of him, as he was bearing away the
memory of her.

What would be more delightful than to say to himself: "I hold the thoughts
of a beautiful young girl, I hold her simple confidences; I possess the
treasure of her sweet secrets."

And although there would never be between her and him but the pure and
chaste sympathy of two souls, was not that enough, was not that a
compensation, sufficient for the step which he was venturing?

And with the audacity of conception and the temerity of conduct of a man on
the border of intoxication, he determined to put his fine project into
execution immediately. His sense became inflamed the more he thought of it,
and what had at first presented itself to him as a vague desire, soon
became firmly fixed in his brain, and, in less than ten seconds, he had
conceived the pl