. What brings you
here? Is it curiosity? In that case I am paying dearly for a little
fleeting pleasure. Have you fallen _passionately_ in love already with a
woman whom you have never seen, a woman with whose name slander has, of
course, been busy? If so, your motive in making this visit is based on
disrespect, on an error which accident brought into notoriety."

She flung her book down scornfully upon the table, then, with a terrible
look at Gaston, she went on: "Because I once was weak, must it be
supposed that I am always weak? This is horrible, degrading. Or have you
come here to pity me? You are very young to offer sympathy with heart
troubles. Understand this clearly, sir, that I would rather have scorn
than pity. I will not endure compassion from any one."

There was a brief pause.

"Well, sir," she continued (and the face that she turned to him was
gentle and sad), "whatever motive induced this rash intrusion upon my
solitude, it is very painful to me, you see. You are too young to be
totally without good feeling, so surely you will feel that this behavior
of yours is improper. I forgive you for it, and, as you see, I am
speaking of it to you without bitterness. You will not come here again,
will you? I am entreating when I might command. If you come to see me
again, neither you nor I can prevent the whole place from believing that
you are my lover, and you would cause me great additional annoyance. You
do not mean to do that, I think."

She said no more, but looked at him with a great dignity which abashed
him.

"I have done wrong, madame," he said, with deep feeling in his voice,
"but it was through enthusiasm and thoughtlessness and eager desire of
happiness, the qualities and defects of my age. Now, I understand that
I ought not to have tried to see you," he added; "but, at the same time,
the desire was a very natural one"--and, making an appeal to feeling
rather than to the intellect, he described the weariness of his enforced
exile. He drew a portrait of a young man in whom the fires of life were
burning themselves out, conveying the impression that here was a heart
worthy of tender love, a heart which, notwithstanding, had never known
the joys of love for a young and beautiful woman of refinement and
taste. He explained, without attempting to justify, his unusual conduct.
He flattered Mme. de Beauseant by showing that she had realized for him
the ideal lady of a young man's dream, the ideal sought b