not a
deliberate intention of playing with hearts to see how many can be
hurt in a season. Judithe, you are no longer the same woman. Where is
the justice you used to gauge every one by? Where the mercy to others
weaker than yourself?"

"Gone!" she laughed lightly; "driven away in self-defense! I have had
to put mercy aside lest it prove my master. The only safeguard against
being too warm to all may be to be cool to all. You perceive that
would never--never do. So--!"

"End all this unsatisfied, feverish life by marrying me," he pleaded.
"I will take you from Paris. With all your social success you have
never been happy here; we will travel. You promised, Judithe, and--"

"Chut! Loris; you are growing ungallant. You should never remember a
woman's promise after she has forgotten it. We were betrothed--yes.
But did I not assure you I might never marry? Maman was made happy for
a little while by the fancy; but now?--well, matrimony is no more
appealing to me than it ever was, and you would not want an
indifferent wife. I like you, you best of all those men you champion,
but I love none of you! Not that I am lacking in affection, but
rather, incapable of concentrating it on one object."

"Once, it was not so; I have not forgotten the episode of Fontainbleu."

"That? Pouf! I have learned things since then, Loris. I have learned
that once, at least, in every life love seems to have been born on
earth for the first time; happy those whom it does not visit too late!
Well! I, also, had to have my little experience; it had to be _some_
one; so it was that stranger. But I have outgrown all that; we always
outgrow those things, do we not? I compare him now with the men I have
known since, and he shrinks, he dwindles! I care only for intellectual
men, and the artistic temperament. He had neither. Yes, it is true;
the girlish fancies appear ridiculous in so short a time."

Dumaresque agreed that it was true of any fancy, to one of fickle
nature.

"No, it is not fickleness," she insisted. "Have you no boyish loves of
the past hidden away, each in their separate nook of memory? Confess!
Are you and the world any the worse for them? Certainly not. They each
contributed a certain amount towards the education of the emotions.
Well; is my education to be neglected because you fear I shall injure
the daintily-bound books in the human library? I shall not, Loris. I
only flutter the leaves a little and glance at the pictures they
o