tremble, the spirit within me wavered.

"I do not know the reason of these inner struggles, and alternations.
I am very pitiably a woman no doubt, weak in my will, strong only to
love. Oh, I despise myself. At night, when all my household was
asleep, I would go out bravely as far as the lake; but when I stood on
the brink, my cowardice shrank from self-destruction. To you I will
confess my weakness. When I lay in my bed, again, shame would come
over me, and courage would come back. Once I took a dose of laudanum;
I was ill, but I did not die. I thought I had emptied the phial, but I
had only taken half the dose."

"You are lost, madame," the cure said gravely, with tears in his
voice. "You will go back into the world, and you will deceive the
world. You will seek and find a compensation (as you imagine it to be)
for your woes; then will come a day of reckoning for your pleasures--"

"Do you think," she cried, "that _I_ shall bestow the last, the most
precious treasures of my heart upon the first base impostor who can
play the comedy of passion? That I would pollute my life for a moment
of doubtful pleasure? No; the flame which shall consume my soul shall
be love, and nothing but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of
their sex, but not all have the man's soul which satisfies all the
requirements of our nature, drawing out the melodious harmony which
never breaks forth save in response to the pressure of feeling. Such a
soul is not found twice in our lifetime. The future that lies before
me is hideous; I know it. A woman is nothing without love; beauty is
nothing without pleasure. And even if happiness were offered to me a
second time, would not the world frown upon it? I owe my daughter an
honored mother. Oh! I am condemned to live in an iron circle, from