My formal words drove him from the house.  But by the time I had bathed my eyes in iced water and cooled my face, I found him in our room, the door into which was open, though I had heard no steps.  He begged me to tell him what was wrong.

“Nothing,” I said; “I saw the mud of Paris on Fedelta’s trembling legs; it seemed strange that you should go there without telling me; but, of course, you are free.”

“I shall punish you for such wicked thoughts by not giving any explanation till to-morrow,” he replied.

“Look at me,” I said.

My eyes met his; deep answered to deep.  No, not a trace of the cloud of disloyalty which, rising from the soul, must dim the clearness of the eye.  I feigned satisfaction, though really unconvinced.  It is not women only who can lie and dissemble!

The whole of the day we spent together.  Ever and again, as I looked at him, I realized how fast my heart-strings were bound to him.  How I trembled and fluttered within when, after a moment’s absence, he reappeared.  I live in him, not in myself.  My cruel sufferings gave the lie to your unkind letter.  Did I ever feel my life thus bound up in the noble Spaniard, who adored me, as I adore this heartless boy?  I hate that mare!  Fool that I was to keep horses!  But the next thing would have been to lame Gaston or imprison him in the cottage.  Wild thoughts like these filled my brain; you see how near I was to madness!  If love be not the cage, what power on earth can hold back the man who wants to be free?

I asked him point-blank, “Do I bore you?”

“What needless torture you give yourself!” was his reply, while he looked at me with tender, pitying eyes.  “Never have I loved you so deeply.”

“If that is true, my beloved, let me sell Fedelta,” I answered.

“Sell her, by all means!”

The reply crushed me.  Was it not a covert taunt at my wealth and his own nothingness in the house?  This may never have occurred to him, but I thought it had, and once more I left him.  It was night, and I would go to bed.

Oh!  Renee, to be alone with a harrowing thought drives one to thoughts of death.  These charming gardens, the starry night, the cool air, laden with incense from our wealth of flowers, our valley, our hills —­all seemed to me gloomy, black, and desolate.  It was as though I lay at the foot of a precipice, surrounded by serpents and poisonous plants, and saw no God in the sky.  Such a night ages a woman.

Next morning I said: 

“Take Fedelta and be off to Paris!  Don’t sell her; I love her.  Does she not carry you?”

But he was not deceived; my tone betrayed the storm of feeling which I strove to conceal.

“Trust me!” he replied; and the gesture with which he held out his hand, the glance of his eye, were so full of loyalty that I was overcome.

“What petty creatures women are!” I exclaimed.

“No, you love me, that is all,” he said, pressing me to his heart.