Mlle. Cesarine had approached the mantel-piece.  She was leaning her elbow upon it, her forehead on her hand, all palpitating and excited.  Intimidated for, perhaps, the first time in her life, she turned away her great blue eyes, as if afraid that they should betray a reflex of her thoughts.

As to M. de Tregars, he remained at his place, not having one whit too much of that power of self-control, which is acquired by a long experience of the world, to conceal his impressions.  If he had a fault, it was certainly not self-conceit; but Mlle. de Thaller had been too explicit and too clear to leave him a doubt.  All she had said could be comprised in one sentence,

“My parents were in hopes that I would become your wife:  I had judged you well enough to understand their error.  Precisely because I love you I acknowledge myself unworthy of you and I wish you to know that if you had asked my hand,—­the hand of a girl who has a dowry of a million—­I would have ceased to esteem you.”

That such a feeling should have budded and blossomed in Mlle. Cesarine’s soul, withered as it was by vanity, and blunted by pleasure was almost a miracle.  It was, at any rate, an astonishing proof of love which she gave; and Marius de Tregars would not have been a man, if he had not been deeply moved by it.  Suddenly,

“What a miserable wretch I am!” she uttered.

“You mean unhappy,” said M. de Tregars gently.

“What can you think of my sincerity?  You must, doubtless, find it strange, impudent, grotesque.”

He lifted his hand in protest; for she gave him no time to put in a word.

“And yet,” she went on, “this is not the first time that I am assailed by sinister ideas, and that I feel ashamed of myself.  I was convinced once that this mad existence of mine is the only enviable one, the only one that can give happiness.  And now I discover that it is not the right path which I have taken, or, rather, which I have been made to take.  And there is no possibility of retracing my steps.”

She turned pale, and, in an accent of gloomy despair,

“Every thing fails me,” she said.  “It seems as though I were rolling into a bottomless abyss, without a branch or a tuft of grass to cling to.  Around me, emptiness, night, chaos.  I am not yet twenty and it seems to me that I have lived thousands of years, and exhausted every sensation.  I have seen every thing, learned every thing, experienced every thing; and I am tired of every thing, and satiated and nauseated.  You see me looking like a brainless hoyden, I sing, I jest, I talk slang.  My gayety surprises everybody.  In reality, I am literally tired to death.  What I feel I could not express, there are no words to render absolute disgust.  Sometimes I say to myself, ’It is stupid to be so sad.  What do you need?  Are you not young, handsome, rich?’ But I must need something, or else I would not be thus agitated, nervous, anxious,