“In England that might be so, but not in France,” I replied with nonchalance.  “I intend to make a love match, and am feeling my way —­that is all.”

You see, dear, as love did not come to me, I had to do as Mahomet did with the mountain.

Friday.

Once more I have seen my slave.  He has become very timid, and puts on an air of pious devotion, which I like, for it seems to say that he feels my power and fascination in every fibre.  But nothing in his look or manner can rouse in these society sibyls any suspicion of the boundless love which I see.  Don’t suppose though, dear, that I am carried away, mastered, tamed; on the contrary, the taming, mastering, and carrying away are on my side . . .

In short, I am quite capable of reason.  Oh! to feel again the terror of that fascination in which I was held by the schoolmaster, the plebeian, the man I kept at a distance!

The fact is that love is of two kinds—­one which commands, and one which obeys.  The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.  To get her full of life, perhaps a woman ought to have experience of both.  Can the two passions ever co-exist?  Can the man in whom we inspire love inspire it in us?  Will the day ever come when Felipe is my master?  Shall I tremble then, as he does now?  These are questions which make me shudder.

He is very blind!  In his place I should have thought Mlle. de Chaulieu, meeting me under the limes, a cold, calculating coquette, with starched manners.  No, that is not love, it is playing with fire.  I am still fond of Felipe, but I am calm and at my ease with him now.  No more obstacles!  What a terrible thought!  It is all ebb-tide within, and I fear to question my heart.  His mistake was in concealing the ardor of his love; he ought to have forced my self-control.

In a word, I was naughty, and I have not got the reward such naughtiness brings.  No, dear, however sweet the memory of that half-hour beneath the trees, it is nothing like the excitement of the old time with its:  “Shall I go?  Shall I not go?  Shall I write to him?  Shall I not write?”

Is it thus with all our pleasures?  Is suspense always better than enjoyment?  Hope than fruition?  Is it the rich who in very truth are the poor?  Have we not both perhaps exaggerated feeling by giving to imagination too free a rein?  There are times when this thought freezes me.  Shall I tell you why?  Because I am meditating another visit to the bottom of the garden—­without Griffith.  How far could I go in this direction?  Imagination knows no limit, but it is not so with pleasure.  Tell me, dear be-furbelowed professor, how can one reconcile the two goals of a woman’s existence?

XXII

LOUISE TO FELIPE

I am not pleased with you.  If you did not cry over Racine’s Berenice, and feel it to be the most terrible of tragedies, there is no kinship in our souls; we shall never get on together, and had better break off at once.  Let us meet no more.  Forget me; for if I do not have a satisfactory reply, I shall forget you.  You will become M. le Baron de Macumer for me, or rather you will cease to be at all.