assumed dignity giving way; she looked at me, took my hand, drew me
along almost, threw me on the sofa, but quite gently, and said after a
moment's silence, 'I am dreadfully unhappy, my dear fellow. Do you
love me?'--'Oh! yes.'--'Well, then, what will become of you?'"

At this point the women all looked at each other.

"Though I can still suffer when I recall her perfidy, I still laugh at
her expression of entire conviction and sweet satisfaction that I must
die, or at any rate sink into perpetual melancholy," de Marsay went
on. "Oh! do not laugh yet!" he said to his listeners; "there is better
to come. I looked at her very tenderly after a pause, and said to her,
'Yes, that is what I have been wondering.'--'Well, what will you do?'
--'I asked myself that the day after my cold.'--'And----?' she asked
with eager anxiety.--'And I have made advances to the little lady to
whom I was supposed to be attached.'

"Charlotte started up from the sofa like a frightened doe, trembling
like a leaf, gave me one of those looks in which women forgo all their
dignity, all their modesty, their refinement, and even their grace,
the sparkling glitter of a hunted viper's eye when driven into a
corner, and said, 'And I have loved this man! I have struggled! I
have----' On this last thought, which I leave you to guess, she made
the most impressive pause I ever heard.--'Good God!' she cried, 'how
unhappy are we women! we never can be loved. To you there is nothing
serious in the purest feelings. But never mind; when you cheat us you
still are our dupes!'--'I see that plainly,' said I, with a stricken
air; 'you have far too much wit in your anger for your heart to suffer
from it.'--This modest epigram increased her rage; she found some
tears of vexation. 'You disgust me with the world and with life.' she