te them.

"Let me see. What ought I to take? Oh! how foolish I have been with all
my childish scruples, when I think that others have lowered themselves
so much as even to tell us falsehoods! Yes! even were I to have died,
they would not have called you to me. But, tell me, must I take linen
and dresses? See, here is a warmer gown. What strange ideas, what
unnumbered obstacles, they put in my head. There was good on one side
and evil on the other: things which one might do, and again that which
one should never do; in short, such a complication of matters, it was
enough to make one wild. They were all falsehoods: there was no truth
in any of them. The only real happiness is to live to love the one
who loves you, and to obey the promptings of the heart. You are the
personification of fortune, of beauty, and of youth, my dear Seigneur;
my only pleasure is in you. I give myself to you freely, and you may do
with me what you wish."

She rejoiced in this breaking-out of all the hereditary tendencies of
her nature, which she thought had died within her. Sounds of distant
music excited her. She saw as it were their royal departure: this son of
a prince carrying her away as in a fairy-tale, and making her queen
of some imaginary realm; and she was ready to follow him with her arms
clasped around his neck, her head upon his breast, with such a trembling
from intense feeling that her whole body grew weak from happiness. To be
alone together, just they two, to abandon themselves to the galloping
of horses, to flee away, and to disappear in each other's arms. What
perfect bliss it would be!

"Is it not better for me to take nothing? What good would it do in
reality?"

He, partaking of her feverishness, was already at the door, as he
replied:

"No, no! Take nothing whatever. Let us go at once."

"Yes, let us go. That is the best thing to do."

And she rejoined him. But she turned round, wishing to give a last
look at the chamber. The lamp was burning with the same soft light, the
bouquet of hydrangeas and hollyhocks was blooming as ever, and in her
work-frame the unfinished rose, bright and natural as life, seemed to
be waiting for her. But the room itself especially affected her. Never
before had it seemed so white and pure to her; the walls, the bed, the
air even, appeared as if filled with a clear, white breath.

Something within her wavered, and she was obliged to lean heavily
against the back of a chair that was near