So sublime was she in her reasoning and her madness, that M. de Nueil felt a wild longing to throw himself at her feet; but he was afraid of making himself ridiculous, so he held his enthusiasm and his thoughts in check.  He was afraid, too, that he might totally fail to express them, and in no less terror of some awful rejection on her part, or of her mockery, an apprehension which strikes like ice to the most fervid soul.  The revulsion which led him to crush down every feeling as it sprang up in his heart cost him the intense pain that diffident and ambitious natures experience in the frequent crises when they are compelled to stifle their longings.  And yet, in spite of himself, he broke the silence to say in a faltering voice: 

“Madame, permit me to give way to one of the strongest emotions of my life, and own to all that you have made me feel.  You set the heart in me swelling high!  I feel within me a longing to make you forget your mortifications, to devote my life to this, to give you love for all who ever have given you wounds or hate.  But this is a very sudden outpouring of the heart, nothing can justify it to-day, and I ought not——­”

“Enough, monsieur,” said Mme. de Beauseant; “we have both of us gone too far.  By giving you the sad reasons for a refusal which I am compelled to give, I meant to soften it and not to elicit homage.  Coquetry only suits a happy woman.  Believe me, we must remain strangers to each other.  At a later day you will know that ties which must inevitably be broken ought not to be formed at all.”

She sighed lightly, and her brows contracted, but almost immediately grew clear again.

“How painful it is for a woman to be powerless to follow the man she loves through all the phases of his life!  And if that man loves her truly, his heart must surely vibrate with pain to the deep trouble in hers.  Are they not twice unhappy?”

There was a short pause.  Then she rose smiling.

“You little suspected, when you came to Courcelles, that you were to hear a sermon, did you?”

Gaston felt even further than at first from this extraordinary woman.  Was the charm of that delightful hour due after all to the coquetry of the mistress of the house?  She had been anxious to display her wit.  He bowed stiffly to the Vicomtesse, and went away in desperation.

On the way home he tried to detect the real character of a creature supple and hard as a steel spring; but he had seen her pass through so many phases, that he could not make up his mind about her.  The tones of her voice, too, were ringing in his ears; her gestures, the little movements of her head, and the varying expression of her eyes grew more gracious in memory, more fascinating as he thought of them.  The Vicomtesse’s beauty shone out again for him in the darkness; his reviving impressions called up yet others, and he was enthralled anew by womanly charm and wit, which at