a look which the most sensitive virtue could fear.

This young man, ironical with all the rest of the world, was serious with
her. From the moment he turned toward her, his voice, face, and
conversation became as serious as if he had entered a church. He had a
great deal of wit, and he used and abused it beyond measure in
conversations in the presence of Madame de Tecle, as if he were making a
display of fireworks in her honor. But on coming to her this was
suddenly extinguished, and he became all submission and respect.

Not every woman who receives from a superior man such delicate flattery
as this necessarily loves him, but she does like him. In the shadow of
the perfect security in which M. de Camors had placed her, Madame de
Tecle could not but be pleased in the company of the most distinguished
man she had ever met, who had, like herself, a taste for art, music, and
for high culture.

Thus these innocent relations with a young man whose reputation was
rather equivocal could not but awaken in the heart of Madame de Tecle a
sentiment, or rather an illusion, which the most prudish could not
condemn.

Libertines offer to vulgar women an attraction which surprises, but which
springs from a reprehensible curiosity. To a woman of society they offer
another, more noble yet not less dangerous--the attraction of reforming
them. It is rare that virtuous women do not fall into the error of
believing that it is for virtue's sake alone such men love them. These,
in brief, were the secret sympathies whose slight tendrils intertwined,
blossomed, and flowered little by little in this soul, as tender as it
was pure.