y so many,
and so often sought in vain. Then he touched upon his morning prowlings
under the walls of Courcelles, and his wild thoughts at the first sight
of the house, till he excited that vague feeling of indulgence which a
woman can find in her heart for the follies committed for her sake.

An impassioned voice was speaking in the chill solitude; the speaker
brought with him a warm breath of youth and the charms of a carefully
cultivated mind. It was so long since Mme. de Beauseant had felt stirred
by real feeling delicately expressed, that it affected her very strongly
now. In spite of herself, she watched M. de Nueil's expressive face, and
admired the noble countenance of a soul, unbroken as yet by the cruel
discipline of the life of the world, unfretted by continual scheming to
gratify personal ambition and vanity. Gaston was in the flower of his
youth, he impressed her as a man with something in him, unaware as
yet of the great career that lay before him. So both these two made
reflections most dangerous for their peace of mind, and both strove to
conceal their thoughts. M. de Nueil saw in the Vicomtesse a rare type of
woman, always the victim of her perfections and tenderness; her graceful
beauty is the least of her charms for those who are privileged to know
the infinite of feeling and thought and goodness in the soul within;
a woman whose instinctive feeling for beauty runs through all the most
varied expressions of love, purifying its transports, turning them to
something almost holy; wonderful secret of womanhood, the exquisite
gift that Nature so seldom bestows. And the Vicomtesse, on her side,
listening to the ring of sincerity in Gaston's voice, while he told of
his youthful troubles, began to understand all that grown children of
five-and-twenty suffer from diffidence, when hard work has kept them
alike from corrupting influences and intercourse with men and women of
the world whose sophistical reasoning and experience destroys the
fair qualities of youth. Here was the ideal of a woman's dreams, a man
unspoiled as yet by the egoism of family or success, or by that narrow
selfishness which blights the first impulses of honor, devotion,
self-sacrifice, and high demands of self; all the flowers so soon wither
that enrich at first the life of delicate but strong emotions, and keep
alive the loyalty of the heart.

But these two, once launched forth into the vast of sentiment, went
far indeed in theory, sound