Mariana no sooner knew him than she loved, and her love, lovely as she was, soon excited his.  But, oh! it is a curse to woman to love first, or most.  In so doing she reverses the natural relations, and her heart can never, never be satisfied with what ensues.

Mariana loved first, and loved most, for she had most force and variety to love with.  Sylvain seemed, at first, to take her to himself, as the deep southern night might some fair star.  But it proved not so.

Mariana was a very intellectual being, and she needed companionship.  This she could only have with Sylvain, in the paths of passion and action.  Thoughts he had none, and little delicacy of sentiment.  The gifts she loved to prepare of such for him, he took with a sweet, but indolent smile; he held them lightly, and soon they fell from his grasp.  He loved to have her near him, to feel the glow and fragrance of her nature, but cared not to explore the little secret paths whence that fragrance was collected.

Mariana knew not this for a long time.  Loving so much, she imagined all the rest, and, where she felt a blank, always hoped that further communion would fill it up.  When she found this could never be; that there was absolutely a whole province of her being to which nothing in his answered, she was too deeply in love to leave him.  Often after passing hours together, beneath the southern moon, when, amid the sweet intoxication of mutual love, she still felt the desolation of solitude, and a repression of her finer powers, she had asked herself, can I give him up?  But the heart always passionately answered, no!  I may be miserable with him, but I cannot live without him.

And the last miserable feeling of these conflicts was, that if the lover, soon to be the bosom friend, could have dreamed of these conflicts, he would have laughed, or else been angry, even enough to give her up.

Ah weakness of the strong.  Of these strong only where strength is weakness.  Like others she had the decisions of life to make, before she had light by which to make them.  Let none condemn her.  Those who have not erred as fatally, should thank the guardian angel who gave them more time to prepare for judgment, but blame no children who thought at arm’s length to find the moon.  Mariana, with a heart capable of highest Eros, gave it to one who knew love only as a flower or plaything, and bound her heartstrings to one who parted his as lightly as the ripe fruit leaves the bough.  The sequel could not fail.  Many console themselves for the one great mistake with their children, with the world.  This was not possible to Mariana.  A few months of domestic life she still was almost happy.  But Sylvain then grew tired.  He wanted business and the world; of these she had no knowledge, for them no faculties.  He wanted in her the head of his house; she to make her heart his home.  No compromise was possible between natures of such unequal poise, and which had met only on one or two points.  Through all its stages she