noble sentiments.
Happy in such thoughts, more in love with her ideal than with the actual
reality, with the future rather than with the present, she desired now
to return upon her steps so as to better establish her power. In this
she acted instinctively, as all women act. Having agreed with her soul
that she would give herself wholly up, she wished--if we may so express
it--to dispute every fragment of the gift; she longed to take back from
the past all her words and looks and acts and make them more in harmony
with the dignity of a woman beloved. Her eyes at times expressed a sort
of terror as she thought of the interview just over, in which she
had shown herself aggressive. But as she watched the face before her,
instinct with power, and felt that a being so strong must also be
generous, she glowed at the thought that her part in life would be
nobler than that of most women, inasmuch as her lover was a man of
character, a man condemned to death, who had come to risk his life in
making war against the Republic. The thought of occupying such a soul to
the exclusion of all rivals gave a new aspect to many matters. Between
the moment, only five hours earlier, when she composed her face and
toned her voice to allure the young man, and the present moment, when
she was able to convulse him with a look, there was all the difference
to her between a dead world and a living one.

In the condition of soul in which Mademoiselle de Verneuil now existed
external life seemed to her a species of phantasmagoria. The carriage
passed through villages and valleys and mounted hills which left no
impressions on her mind. They reached Mayenne; the soldiers of the
escort were changed; Merle spoke to her; she replied; they crossed the
whole town and were again in the open country; but the faces, houses,
streets, landscape, men, swept past her like the figments of a dream.
Night came, and Marie was travelling beneath a diamond sky, wrapped in
soft light, and yet she was not aware that darkness had succeeded day;
that Mayenne was passed; that Fougeres was near; she knew not even where
she was going. That she should part in a few hours from the man she
had chosen, and who, she believed, had chosen her, was not for her a
possibility. Love is the only passion which looks to neither past nor
future. Occasionally her thoughts escaped in broken words, in phrases
devoid of meaning, though to her lover's ears they sounded like promises
of love. To th