ian.'

"'Nay, nay, monsieur, the convent is my last hope and my only refuge.
There is none but God who can understand me. No man, not Saint Augustine
himself, the tenderest of the Fathers of the Church, could enter into
the scruples of my conscience, which are to me as the circles of Dante's
hell, whence there is no escape. Another than my husband, a different
man, however unworthy of the offering, has had all my love. No, he has
not had it, for he did not take it; I gave it him as a mother gives her
child a wonderful toy, which it breaks. For me there never could be two
loves. In some natures love can never be on trial; it is, or it is not.
When it comes, when it rises up, it is complete.--Well, that life of
eighteen months was to me a life of eighteen years; I threw into it
all the faculties of my being, which were not impoverished by their
effusiveness; they were exhausted by that delusive intimacy in which
I alone was genuine. For me the cup of happiness is not drained, nor
empty; and nothing can refill it, for it is broken. I am out of the
fray; I have no weapons left. Having thus utterly abandoned myself,
what am I?--the leavings of a feast. I had but one name bestowed on
me, Honorine, as I had but one heart. My husband had the young girl, a
worthless lover had the woman--there is nothing left!--Then let myself
be loved! that is the great idea you mean to utter to me. Oh! but I
still am something, and I rebel at the idea of being a prostitute! Yes,
by the light of the conflagration I saw clearly; and I tell you--well, I
could imagine surrendering to another man's love, but to Octave's?--No,
never.'

"'Ah! you love him,' I said.

"'I esteem him, respect him, venerate him; he never has done me the
smallest hurt; he is kind, he is tender; but I can never more love him.
However,' she went on, 'let us talk no more of this. Discussion makes
everything small. I will express my notions on this subject in writing
to you, for at this moment they are suffocating me; I am feverish, my
feet are standing in the ashes of my Paraclete. All that I see, these
things which I believed I had earned by my labor, now remind me of
everything I wish to forget. Ah! I must fly from hence as I fled from my
home.'

"'Where will you go?' I asked. 'Can a woman exist unprotected? At
thirty, in all the glory of your beauty, rich in powers of which you
have no suspicion, full of tenderness to be bestowed, are you prepared
to live in the wilde