if she had been free to come and go all her life.  And that this knowledge had been gained surreptitiously, in stolen moments and brief experiences at the expense of the whole of her reverence for religion, the whole of her faith in men’s purity, was not poor Victorine’s fault, only her misfortune; but the result was no less disastrous to her morals.  She went out of the convent as complete a little hypocrite as ever told beads and repeated prayers.  Only a certain sort of infantile superstitiousness of nature remained in her, and made her cling to the forms, in which, though she knew they did not mean what they pretended, she suspected there might be some sort of mechanical efficacy at last; like the partly undeceived disciple and assistant of a master juggler, who is not quite sure that there may not be a supernatural power behind some of the tricks.  Beyond an overflowing animal vitality, and a passion for having men make love to her, there really was not much of Victorine.  But it is wonderful how far these two qualities can pass in a handsome woman for other and nobler ones.  The animal life so keen, intense, sensuous, can seem like cleverness, wit, taste; the passion for receiving homage from men can make a woman graceful, amiable, and alluring.  Some of the greatest passions the world has ever seen have been inspired in men by just such women as this.

Victorine was not without accomplishments and some smattering of knowledge.  She had read a good deal of French, and chattered it like the true granddaughter of a Normandy proprietaire.  She sang, in a half-rude, half-melodious way, snatches of songs which sounded better than they really were, she sang them with so much heartiness and abandon.  She embroidered exquisitely, and had learned the trick of making many of the pretty and useless things at which nuns work so patiently to fill up their long hours.  She had an insatiable love of dress, and attired herself daily in successions of varied colors and shapes merely to look at herself in the glass, and on the chance of showing herself to any stray traveller who might come.

The inn had been built in a piecemeal fashion by Victor Dubois himself, and he had been unconsciously guided all the while by his memories of the old farmhouse in Normandy in which he was born; so that the house really looked more like Normandy than like America.  It had on one corner a square tower, which began by being a shed attached to the kitchen, then was promoted to bearing up a chamber for grain, and at last was topped off by a fine airy room, projecting on all sides over the other two, and having great casement windows reaching close up to the broad, hanging eaves.  A winding staircase outside led to what had been the grain-chamber:  this was now Jeanne’s room.  The room above was Victorine’s, and she reached it only by a narrow, ladder-like stairway from her mother’s bedroom; so the young lady’s movements were kept well in sight, her mother thought.