ther men will tell you that you have
given them life; as for myself, I tell you, with rapture, that you have
given me blank extinction. Perhaps you guess that I am not my own, that
I am bound to live for my friends, that from this time forth I must
endure the cold chill of death, as well as the burden of life? Is it
possible that there can be so much kindness in you? Are you like the
desert tigress that licks the wounds she has inflicted?"

The Duchess burst out sobbing.

"Pray spare your tears, madame. If I believed in them at all, it would
merely set me on my guard. Is this another of your artifices? or is it
not? You have used so many with me; how can one think that there is any
truth in you? Nothing that you do or say has any power now to move me.
That is all I have to say."

Mme de Langeais rose to her feet, with a great dignity and humility in
her bearing.

"You are right to treat me very hardly," she said, holding out a hand to
the man who did not take it; "you have not spoken hardly enough; and I
deserve this punishment."

"_I_ punish you, madame! A man must love still, to punish, must he not?
From me you must expect no feeling, nothing resembling it. If I chose, I
might be accuser and judge in my cause, and pronounce and carry out the
sentence. But I am about to fulfil a duty, not a desire of vengeance of
any kind. The cruelest revenge of all, I think, is scorn of revenge when
it is in our power to take it. Perhaps I shall be the minister of your
pleasures; who knows? Perhaps from this time forth, as you gracefully
wear the tokens of disgrace by which society marks out the criminal, you
may perforce learn something of the convict's sense of honour. And then,
you will love!"

The Duchess sat listening; her meekness was unfeigned; it was no
coquettish device. When she spoke at last, it was after a silence.

"Armand," she began, "it seems to me that when I resisted love, I was
obeying all the instincts of woman's modesty; I should not have looked
for such reproaches from _you_. I was weak; you have turned all my
weaknesses against me, and made so many crimes of them. How could you
fail to understand that the curiosity of love might have carried me
further than I ought to go; and that next morning I might be angry
with myself, and wretched because I had gone too far? Alas! I sinned in
ignorance. I was as sincere in my wrongdoing, I swear to you, as in
my remorse. There was far more love for you in my severi