Poor Paolina had no conception that any insult at all was offered to her or intended.  Ludovico was minded to offer to her that which it was in his power to offer, for her to accept if it suited her, or to decline if it suited her not.  The species of tie that he offered her was all he could offer her.  It was one very frequently offered and very frequently accepted in similar cases.  Had the possibility that she might one day accept such been suggested to her, it would have produced no horror in her mind.  She had no conviction during all these eight months that she never could or would accept such a position from any man.  Why, then, did not matters proceed harmoniously and smoothly between them?  Why had not Paolina become Ludovico’s mistress before this time?  What was the meaning of the averted face, and of that broken off “but—­” which she had found it so difficult to follow with a completed sentence?

The meaning was, that Paolina’s own heart, during those hours of reverie filled with the meditation of her love,—­during those pourings forth of her confessions of love to her heavenly confidant in her bedside prayers;—­during her nightly review of the love-passages of the day,—­her own heart, as it became clearer to her, had revealed to her, that she could not accede to any such proposal as that which, she was well persuaded, the Marchese could alone offer to her;—­had revealed it to her, not in obedience to any moral principle; not by any what-do-you-take-me-for process of indignant virtue; but by an instinctive feeling irresistible and not to be gainsayed, that the love she had to bestow must possess its object wholly and entirely, or not at all.  It was quite a matter of course that Ludovico would marry some lady in his rank of life.  She was not ignorant of the position in which he stood with regard to the Contessa Violante.  And his openness to her on this subject is a curious indication of the very wide difference between the mode in which the whole subject would be looked at by both parties in the world in which they lived, and in our own.

Philosophers, as the result of much learned observation and long reasonings, come to the conclusion that monogamy is best suited, on the whole, to the nature, the requirements, and progressive improvement of mankind.  A pure-hearted woman, who loves with a true and great love, finds a shorter cut to the same conviction.

And the growing depth and earnestness of Paolina’s love had arrived at teaching her this with unmistakable clearness.  She might pine, might die—­might compel her heart to turn to stone;—­might seek the refuge of a cloister, which is the southern equivalent for suicide;- -but she could not—­she felt she could not live and be content to share her lover’s love with another.  It was not any sensation of the nature of jealousy so much as an unconquerable feeling that not to have all was to have nothing;—­that she must have all and for ever; that she and he must be one;—­one flesh and one spirit.