and the sweet kindness of the princess,
working together with the great beauty of her softened manner, so
affected him that he thought no more of his wager, and could not
endure to carry on his deception. And nothing would serve his turn but
to confess to the princess what he had done, and humble himself in
the dust before her, and entreat her to pardon him and let him find
forgiveness. Therefore, impelled by these feelings, after he had lain
still a few moments listening to the princess's weeping, he leapt
suddenly out of the bed, showing himself fully clothed under the
bedgown which he now eagerly tore off, and he rubbed all the white
he could from his cheeks; and then he fell on his knees before the
princess, crying to her that he had played the meanest trick on her,
and that he was a scoundrel and no gentleman, and yet that, unless she
forgave him, he should in very truth die. Nay, he would not consent to
live, unless he could win from her pardon for his deceit. And in all
this he was now most absolutely in earnest, wondering only how he had
not been as passionately enamoured of her from the first as he had
feigned himself to be. For a man in love can never conceive himself
out of it; nor he that is out of it, in it: for, if he can, he is
halfway to the one or the other, however little he may know it.

At first the princess sat as though she were turned to stone. But when
he had finished his confession, and she understood the trick that had
been played upon her, and how not only her kiss but also her tears had
been won from her by fraud; and when she thought, as she did, that the
marquis was playing another trick upon her, and that there was no more
truth nor honesty in his present protestations than in those which
went before--she fell into great shame and into a great rage; and her
eyes flashed like the eyes of her father himself, as she rose to her
feet and looked down on Monsieur de Merosailles as he knelt imploring
her. Now her face turned pale from red, and she set her lips, and she
drew her gown close round her lest his touch should defile it (so the
unhappy gentleman understood the gesture), and she daintily picked her
steps round him lest by chance she should happen to come in contact
with so foul a thing. Thus she walked toward the door, and, having
reached it, she turned and said to him:

"Your death may blot out the insult--nothing less;" and with her head
held high, and her whole air full of scorn, sh