However, it was imperative in his mind that he should be sure he had the power to move her.

He began; clumsily at first, as yonder gauntletted knight attempting the briny handkerchief.

“What are we!  We last but a very short time.  Why not live to gratify our appetites?  I might really ask myself why.  All the means of satiating them are at my disposal.  But no:  I must aim at the highest:—­at that which in my blindness I took for the highest.  You know the sportsman’s instinct, Laetitia; he is not tempted by the stationary object.  Such are we in youth, toying with happiness, leaving it, to aim at the dazzling and attractive.”

“We gain knowledge,” said Laetitia.

“At what a cost!”

The exclamation summoned self-pity to his aid, and pathos was handy.

“By paying half our lives for it and all our hopes!  Yes, we gain knowledge, we are the wiser; very probably my value surpasses now what it was when I was happier.  But the loss!  That youthful bloom of the soul is like health to the body; once gone, it leaves cripples behind.  Nay, my friend and precious friend, these four fingers I must retain.  They seem to me the residue of a wreck:  you shall be released shortly:  absolutely, Laetitia, I have nothing else remaining—­We have spoken of deception; what of being undeceived?—­when one whom we adored is laid bare, and the wretched consolation of a worthy object is denied to us.  No misfortune can be like that.  Were it death, we could worship still.  Death would be preferable.  But may you be spared to know a situation in which the comparison with your inferior is forced on you to your disadvantage and your loss because of your generously giving up your whole heart to the custody of some shallow, light-minded, self—! . . .  We will not deal in epithets.  If I were to find as many bad names for the serpent as there are spots on his body, it would be serpent still, neither better nor worse.  The loneliness!  And the darkness!  Our luminary is extinguished.  Self-respect refuses to continue worshipping, but the affection will not be turned aside.  We are literally in the dust, we grovel, we would fling away self-respect if we could; we would adopt for a model the creature preferred to us; we would humiliate, degrade ourselves; we cry for justice as if it were for pardon . . .”

“For pardon! when we are straining to grant it!” Laetitia murmured, and it was as much as she could do.  She remembered how in her old misery her efforts after charity had twisted her round to feel herself the sinner, and beg forgiveness in prayer:  a noble sentiment, that filled her with pity of the bosom in which it had sprung.  There was no similarity between his idea and hers, but her idea had certainly been roused by his word “pardon”, and he had the benefit of it in the moisture of her eyes.  Her lips trembled, tears fell.

He had heard something; he had not caught the words, but they were manifestly favourable; her sign of emotion assured him of it and of the success he had sought.  There was one woman who bowed to him to all eternity!  He had inspired one woman with the mysterious, man-desired passion of self-abandonment, self-immolation!  The evidence was before him.  At any instant he could, if he pleased, fly to her and command her enthusiasm.