“Without mother, family, or protector, it would be an extraordinary thing for me to do!  I can not fail to see that sooner or later I should be a lost girl.”

Camors remained silent.  “Why do you not answer?” she asked.

“Heavens!  Mademoiselle, because this is so delicate a subject, and our ideas are so different about it.  I can not change mine; I must leave you yours.  As for me, I am a very pagan.”

“How?  Are good and bad indifferent to you?”

“No; but to me it seems bad to fear the opinion of people one despises, to practise what one does not believe, and to yield before prejudices and phantoms of which one knows the unreality.  It is bad to be a slave or a hypocrite, as are three fourths of the world.  Evil is ugliness, ignorance, folly, and baseness.  Good is beauty, talent, ability, and courage!  That is all.”

“And God?” the girl cried.  He did not reply.  She looked fixedly at him a moment without catching the eyes he kept turned from her.  Her head drooped heavily; then raising it suddenly, she said:  “There are sentiments men can not understand.  In my bitter hours I have often dreamed of this free life you now advise; but I have always recoiled before one thought—­only one.”

“And that?”

“Perhaps the sentiment is not peculiar to me—­perhaps it is excessive pride, but I have a great regard for myself—­my person is sacred to me.  Should I come to believe in nothing, like you—­and I am far from that yet, thank God!—­I should even then remain honest and true—­faithful to one love, simply from pride.  I should prefer,” she added, in a voice deep and sustained, but somewhat strained, “I should prefer to desecrate an altar rather than myself!”

Saying these words, she rose, made a haughty movement of the head in sign of an adieu, and left the room.

CHAPTER V

THE COUNT LOSES A LADY AND FINDS A MISSION

Camors sat for some time plunged in thought.

He was astonished at the depths he had discovered in her character; he was displeased with himself without well knowing why; and, above all, he was much struck by his cousin.

However, as he had but a slight opinion of the sincerity of women, he persuaded himself that Mademoiselle de Luc d’Estrelles, when she came to offer him her heart and hand, nevertheless knew he was not altogether a despicable match for her.  He said to himself that a few years back he might have been duped by her apparent sincerity, and congratulated himself on not having fallen into this attractive snare—­on not having listened to the first promptings of credulity and sincere emotion.

He might have spared himself these compliments.  Mademoiselle de Luc d’Estrelles, as he was soon to discover, had been in that perfectly frank, generous, and disinterested state of mind in which women sometimes are.

Only, would it happen to him to find her so in the future?  That was doubtful, thanks to M. de Camors.  It often happens that by despising men too much, we degrade them; in suspecting women too much, we lose them.