She had only kept, to exorcise the demon of suicide, her hope in the heart of that man, and that heart, toward which she turned in so immoderate a transport, drew back instead of responding.

“Calm yourself, I beseech you,” said he to her.  “You can understand that I am very much moved, very much surprised, at what I have heard!  I did not suspect it.  My God!  How troubled you are.  And yet,” he continued with more firmness, “I should despise myself were I to lie to you.  You have been so loyal toward me....  To marry you?  Ah, it would be the most delightful dream of happiness if that dream were not prevented by honesty.  Poor child,” and his voice sounded almost bitter, “you do not know me.  You do not know what a writer of my order is, and that to unite your destiny to mine would be for you martyrdom more severe than your moral solitude of to-day.  You see, I came to your home with so much joy, because I was free, because each time I could say to myself that I need not return again.  Such a confession is not romantic.  But it is thus.  If that relation became a bond, an obligation, a fixed framework in which to move, a circle of habits in which to imprison me, I should only have one thought—­flight.  An engagement for my entire life?  No, no, I could not bear it.  There are souls of passage as well as birds of passage, and I am one.  You will understand it tomorrow, now, and you will remember that I have spoken to you as a man of honor, who would be miserable if he thought he had augmented, involuntarily, the sorrows of your life when his only desire was to assuage them.  My God!  What is to be done?” he cried, on seeing, as he spoke, tears gush from the young girl’s eyes, which she did not wipe away.

“Go away,” she replied, “leave me.  I do not want you.  I am grateful to you for not having deceived me.”

“But your presence is too cruel.  I am ashamed of having spoken to you, now that I know you do not love me.  I have been mad, do not punish me by remaining longer.  After the conversation we have just had, my honor will not permit us to talk longer.”

“You are right,” said Julien, after another pause.  He took his hat, which he had placed upon a table at the beginning of that visit, so rapidly and abruptly terminated by a confession of sentiments so strange.  He said: 

“Then, farewell.”  She inclined her fair head without replying.

The door was closed.  Alba Steno was again alone.  Half an hour later, when the footman entered to ask for orders relative to the carriage sent back by the Countess, he found her standing motionless at the window from which she had watched Dorsenne depart.  There she had once more been seized by the temptation of suicide.  She had again felt with an irresistible force the magnetic attraction of death.  Life appeared to her once more as something too vile, too useless, too insupportable to be borne.  The carriage was at her disposal.  By way of the Portese gate and