I try to recall this intoxicating babble, that I may picture to you the woman as she is, confirm all I have said of her, and let you into the secret of what happened later.  But how shall I describe the accompaniment of the words?  She sought to annihilate by the passion of her impetuous love the impressions left in my heart by the chaste and dignified love of my Henriette.  Lady Dudley had seen the countess as plainly as the countess had seen her; each had judged the other.  The force of Arabella’s attack revealed to me the extent of her fear, and her secret admiration for her rival.  In the morning I found her with tearful eyes, complaining that she had not slept.

“What troubles you?” I said.

“I fear that my excessive love will ruin me,” she answered; “I have given all.  Wiser than I, that woman possesses something that you still desire.  If you prefer her, forget me; I will not trouble you with my sorrows, my remorse, my sufferings; no, I will go far away and die, like a plant deprived of the life-giving sun.”

She was able to wring protestations of love from my reluctant lips, which filled her with joy.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, drying her eyes, “I am happy.  Go back to her; I do not choose to owe you to the force of my love, but to the action of your own will.  If you return here I shall know that you love me as much as I love you, the possibility of which I have always doubted.”

She persuaded me to return to Clochegourde.  The false position in which I thus placed myself did not strike me while still under the influence of her wiles.  Yet, had I refused to return I should have given Lady Dudley a triumph over Henriette.  Arabella would then have taken me to Paris.  To go now to Clochegourde was an open insult to Madame de Mortsauf; in that case Arabella was sure of me.  Did any woman ever pardon such crimes against love?  Unless she were an angel descended from the skies, instead of a purified spirit ascending to them, a loving woman would rather see her lover die than know him happy with another.  Thus, look at it as I would, my situation, after I had once left Clochegourde for the Grenadiere, was as fatal to the love of my choice as it was profitable to the transient love that held me.  Lady Dudley had calculated all this with consummate cleverness.  She owned to me later that if she had not met Madame de Mortsauf on the moor she had intended to compromise me by haunting Clochegourde until she did so.

When I met the countess that morning, and found her pale and depressed like one who has not slept all night, I was conscious of exercising the instinctive perception given to hearts still fresh and generous to show them the true bearing of actions little regarded by the world at large, but judged as criminal by lofty spirits.  Like a child going down a precipice in play and gathering flowers, who sees with dread that it can never climb that height again, feels itself alone, with night approaching, and hears the howls