discovered that he was under the yoke of the senses, and his bondage
made the heavier by his love.

The woman so cavalierly treated in his thoughts of yesterday had become
a most sacred and dreadful power. She was to be his world, his life,
from this time forth. The greatest joy, the keenest anguish, that he
had yet known grew colorless before the bare recollection of the least
sensation stirred in him by her. The swiftest revolutions in a man's
outward life only touch his interests, while passion brings a complete
revulsion of feeling. And so in those who live by feeling, rather than
by self-interest, the doers rather than the reasoners, the sanguine
rather than the lymphatic temperaments, love works a complete
revolution. In a flash, with one single reflection, Armand de Montriveau
wiped out his whole past life.

A score of times he asked himself, like a boy, "Shall I go, or shall I
not?" and then at last he dressed, came to the Hotel de Langeais
towards eight o'clock that evening, and was admitted. He was to see the
woman--ah! not the woman--the idol that he had seen yesterday, among
lights, a fresh innocent girl in gauze and silken lace and veiling.
He burst in upon her to declare his love, as if it were a question of
firing the first shot on a field of battle.

Poor novice! He found his ethereal sylphide shrouded in a brown cashmere
dressing-gown ingeniously befrilled, lying languidly stretched out upon
a sofa in a dimly lighted boudoir. Mme de Langeais did not so much as
rise, nothing was visible of her but her face, her hair was loose but
confined by a scarf. A hand indicated a seat, a hand that seemed white
as marble to Montriveau by the flickering light of a single candle at
the further side of the room, and a voice as soft as the light said:

"If it had been anyone else, M. le Marquis, a friend with whom I could
dispense with ceremony, or a mere acquaintance in whom I felt but slight
interest, I should have closed my door. I am exceedingly unwell."

"I will go," Armand said to himself.

"But I do not know how it is," she continued (and the simple warrior
attributed the shining of her eyes to fever), "perhaps it was a
presentiment of your kind visit (and no one can be more sensible of the
prompt attention than I), but the vapors have left my head."

"Then may I stay?"

"Oh, I should be very sorry to allow you to go. I told myself this
morning that it was impossible that I should have made the slightest