en to reason. But his wife is quite mad----" and
so forth and so forth.

M. de Nueil, still listening to the speaker's voice, gathered nothing of
the sense of the words; his brain was too full of thick-coming fancies.
Fancies? What other name can you give to the alluring charms of an
adventure that tempts the imagination and sets vague hopes springing up
in the soul; to the sense of coming events and mysterious felicity and
fear at hand, while as yet there is no substance of fact on which these
phantoms of caprice can fix and feed? Over these fancies thought hovers,
conceiving impossible projects, giving in the germ all the joys of love.
Perhaps, indeed, all passion is contained in that thought-germ, as the
beauty, and fragrance, and rich color of the flower is all packed in the
seed.

M. de Nueil did not know that Mme. de Beauseant had taken refuge in
Normandy, after a notoriety which women for the most part envy and
condemn, especially when youth and beauty in some sort excuse the
transgression. Any sort of celebrity bestows an inconceivable prestige.
Apparently for women, as for families, the glory of the crime effaces
the stain; and if such and such a noble house is proud of its tale of
heads that have fallen on the scaffold, a young and pretty woman becomes
more interesting for the dubious renown of a happy love or a scandalous
desertion, and the more she is to be pitied, the more she excites our
sympathies. We are only pitiless to the commonplace. If, moreover, we
attract all eyes, we are to all intents and purposes great; how, indeed,
are we to be seen unless we raise ourselves above other people's heads?
The common herd of humanity feels an involuntary respect for any person
who can rise above it, and is not over-particular as to the means by
which they rise.

It may have been that some such motives influenced Gaston de Nueil at
unawares, or perhaps it was curiosity, or a craving for some interest in
his life, or, in a word, that crowd of inexplicable impulses which, for
want of a better name, we are wont to call "fatality," that drew him to
Mme. de Beauseant.

The figure of the Vicomtesse de Beauseant rose up suddenly before him
with gracious thronging associations. She was a new world for him,
a world of fears and hopes, a world to fight for and to conquer.
Inevitably he felt the contrast between this vision and the human beings
in the shabby room; and then, in truth, she was a woman; what woman had
he se