to-day, I have forfeited happiness through marriage, as well as the
happiness styled criminal, and I have known no happiness. Nothing is
left to me. If I could not die, at least I ought to be faithful to my
memories."

No tears came with the words. Her eyes fell, and there was a slight
twisting of the fingers interclasped, according to her wont. It was
simply said, but in her voice there was a note of despair, deep as her
love seemed to have been, which left Charles without a hope. The
dreadful story of a life told in three sentences, with that twisting
of the fingers for all comment, the might of anguish in a fragile
woman, the dark depths masked by a fair face, the tears of four years
of mourning fascinated Vandenesse; he sat silent and diminished in the
presence of her woman's greatness and nobleness, seeing not the
physical beauty so exquisite, so perfectly complete, but the soul so
great in its power to feel. He had found, at last, the ideal of his
fantastic imaginings, the ideal so vigorously invoked by all who look
on life as the raw material of a passion for which many a one seeks
ardently, and dies before he has grasped the whole of the dreamed-of
treasure.

With those words of hers in his ears, in the presence of her sublime
beauty, his own thoughts seemed poor and narrow. Powerless as he felt
himself to find words of his own, simple enough and lofty enough to
scale the heights of this exaltation, he took refuge in platitudes as
to the destiny of women.

"Madame, we must either forget our pain, or hollow out a tomb for
ourselves."