shelter behind the arbour and hide my emotion. I felt as though I should
swoon away. I should certainly have fallen if I had not rested my head
against a tree.

My first idea had been a fearful thought, which I hastened to repel, that
Madame, having enjoyed me, wished to deny all knowledge of the fact--a
device which is in the power of any woman who gives up her person in the
dark to adopt, as it is impossible to convict her of lying. However, I
knew the divine creature I had thought I possessed too well to believe
her capable of such base deceit. I felt that she would have been lacking
in delicacy, if she had said she had waited for me in vain by way of a
jest; as in such a case as this the least doubt is a degradation. I was
forced, then, to the conclusion that she had been supplanted by the
infernal widow. How had she managed it? How had she ascertained our
arrangements? I could not imagine, and I bewildered myself with painful
surmises. Reason only comes to the aid of the mind when the confusion
produced by painful thoughts has almost vanished. I concluded, then, that
I had spent two hours with this abominable monster; and what increased my
anguish, and made me loathe and despise myself still more, was that I
could not help confessing that I had been perfectly happy. It was an
unpardonable mistake, as the two women differed as much as white does
from black, and though the darkness forbade my seeing, and the silence my
hearing, my sense of touch should have enlightened me--after the first
set-to, at all events, but my imagination was in a state of ecstasy. I
cursed love, my nature, and above all the inconceivable weakness which
had allowed me to receive into my house the serpent that had deprived me
of an angel, and made me hate myself at the thought of having defiled
myself with her. I resolved to die, after having torn to pieces with my
own hands the monster who had made me so unhappy.