am too proud not to endeavor to live like one apart in the world, a
victim of the law through my marriage, man's victim through my love. If
I were not faithful to the position which I have taken up, then I should
deserve all the reproach that is heaped upon me; I should be lowered in
my own eyes. I had not enough lofty social virtue to remain with a man
whom I did not love. I have snapped the bonds of marriage in spite of
the law; it was wrong, it was a crime, it was anything you like, but
for me the bonds meant death. I meant to live. Perhaps if I had been
a mother I could have endured the torture of a forced marriage of
suitability. At eighteen we scarcely know what is done with us, poor
girls that we are! I have broken the laws of the world, and the world
has punished me; we both did rightly. I sought happiness. Is it not a
law of our nature to seek for happiness? I was young, I was beautiful...
I thought that I had found a nature as loving, as apparently passionate.
I was loved indeed; for a little while..."

She paused.

"I used to think," she said, "that no one could leave a woman in such
a position as mine. I have been forsaken; I must have offended in
some way. Yes, in some way, no doubt, I failed to keep some law of our
nature, was too loving, too devoted, too exacting--I do not know. Evil
days have brought light with them! For a long while I blamed another,
now I am content to bear the whole blame. At my own expense, I have
absolved that other of whom I once thought I had a right to complain. I
had not the art to keep him; fate has punished me heavily for my lack
of skill. I only knew how to love; how can one keep oneself in mind when
one loves? So I was a slave when I should have sought to be a tyrant.
Those who know me may condemn me, but they will respect me too. Pain
has taught me that I must not lay myself open to this a second time. I
cannot understand how it is that I am living yet, after the anguish of
that first week of the most fearful crisis in a woman's life. Only from
three years of loneliness would it be possible to draw strength to speak
of that time as I am speaking now. Such agony, monsieur, usually ends in
death; but this--well, it was the agony of death with no tomb to end it.
Oh! I have known pain indeed!"

The Vicomtesse raised her beautiful eyes to the ceiling; and the
cornice, no doubt, received all the confidences which a stranger might
not hear. When a woman is afraid to look at her