own thoughts as if she feared to communicate them; she would go into
the house to warm herself when I was in the garden, and return to sit
on the stone bench in the arbor when I joined her at the fireside. At
length I went to her in the arbor; the last yellow leaves hung loosely
from the vine, and allowed the sun to penetrate and envelop her with
its rays.

"What is it you wish to think of without me?" I said in a tone of
tender reproach. "Do I ever think alone?" "Alas!" she answered, "you
will not believe me, but I was thinking, that I could wish to be Madame
de Warens for you, during one single season, even though I were to be
forsaken for the remainder of my days, and though shame were to attach
to my memory like hers; even though you proved yourself as ungrateful
and calumniating as Rousseau!.... How happy she was," she continued,
gazing up at the sky as though she sought the image of the strange
creature she envied,--"how happy she was! she sacrificed herself for
him she loved."

"What ingratitude and what profanation of yourself and of our
happiness!" I answered, walking slowly back with her towards the house,
upon the dry leaves, that rustled beneath our feet.

"Have I then ever, by a single word, or look, or by a single sigh,
shown that aught was wanting to my bitter but complete felicity? Cannot
you, in your angelic fancy, imagine for another Rousseau (if Nature
could have produced two) another Madame de Warens?--a Madame de Warens,
young and pure, angel, lover, sister, all at once, bestowing her whole
soul, her immaculate and immortal soul, instead of her perishable
charms; bestowing it on a brother who was lost and is found, who was
young, misled, and wandering too in this world, like the son of the