It is not that—­Is it caprice or coquetry?  Your mind is too serious and your soul too honest for such an act; and besides, what would be your object?  Such feline cruelties may suit blase women of the world who are roused by the sight of moral torture; who give, in the invisible sphere of the passions, feasts of the Roman empresses, where beating hearts are torn by the claws of the wild beasts of the soul, unbridled desires, insatiate hate and maddened jealousy, all the hideous pack of bad passions.  Louise, you have not wished to play such a game with me.  It would be unavailing and dangerous.

Although I have been brought up in what is called the world, I am still a savage at heart.  I can talk as others do of politics, railroads, social economy, literature.  I can imitate civilized gesture tolerably well; but under this white-glove polish I have preserved the vehemence and simplicity of barbarism.  Unless you have some serious, paramount reason, not one of those trivial excuses with which ordinary women revenge themselves upon the lukewarmness of their lovers—­do not prolong my punishment a day, an hour, a minute—­speak not to me of reputation, virtue or duty.  You have given me the right to love you—­by the light of the stars, under the sweet-scented acacias, in the sunlight at the window of Richard’s donjon which opens over an abyss.  You have conferred upon me that august priesthood.  Your hand has trembled in mine.  A celestial light, kindled by my glance, has shone in your eyes.  If only for a moment, your soul was mine—­the electric spark united us.

It may be that this signifies nothing to you.  I refuse to acknowledge any such subtle distinctions—­that moment united us for ever.  For one instant you wished to love me; I cannot divide my mind, soul and body into three distinct parts; all my being worships you and longs to obtain you.  I cannot graduate my love according to its object.  I do not know who you are.  You might be a queen of earth or the queen of heaven; I could not love you otherwise.

Receive me.  You need explain nothing if you do not wish; but receive me; I cannot live without you.  What difference does it make to you if I see you?

Ah! how I suffered, even when you were at the chateau!  What evil influence stood between us?  I had a vague feeling that something important and fatal had happened.  It was a sort of presentiment of the fulfilment of a destiny.  Was your fate or mine decided in that hour, or both?  What decisive sentence had the recording angel written upon the ineffaceable register of the future?  Who was condemned and who absolved in that solemn hour?

And yet no appreciable event happened, nothing appeared changed in our life.  Why this fearful uneasiness, this deep dejection, this presentiment of a great but unknown danger?  I have had that same instinctive perception of evil, that magnetic terror which slumbering misers experience when a thief prowls around their hidden treasure; it seemed as if some one wished to rob me of my happiness.