out. She is the arch-thief and assassin of mankind--the female Apollyon.
He lost sight of her in the prodigious iniquity covering her sex with a
cowl of night, and it was what women are, what women will do, the one and
all alike simpering simulacra that men find them to be, soulless, clogs
on us, bloodsuckers! until a feature of the particular sinner peeped out
on him, and brought the fresh agony of a reminder of his great-
heartedness. 'For that woman--Tresten, you know me--I would have
sacrificed for that woman fortune and life, my hope, my duty, my
immortality. She knew it, and she--look!' he unwrinkled the letter
carefully for it to be legible, and clenched it in a ball.' Signs her
name, signs her name, her name!--God of heaven! it would be incredible in
a holy chronicle--signs her name to the infamous harlotry! See:
"Clotilde von Rudiger." It's her writing; that's her signature:
"Clotilde" in full. You'd hardly fancy that, now? But look!' the
colonel's eyelids were blinking, and Alvan dinted his finger-nail under
her name: 'there it is: Clotilde: signed shamelessly. Just as she might
have written to one of her friends about bonnets, and balls, and books!
Henceforward strangers, she and I?'

His laughter, even to Tresten, a man of camps, sounded profane as a
yell beneath a cathedral dome. 'Why, the woman has been in my hands--
I released her, spared her, drilled brain and blood, ransacked all the
code, to do her homage and honour in every mortal way; and we two
strangers! Do you hear that, Tresten? Why, if you had seen her!--she
was lost, and I, this man she now pierces with ice, kept hell down under
bolt and bar-worse, I believe, broke a good woman's heart! that never a
breath should rise that could accuse her on suspicion, or in malice, or
by accident, justly, or with a shadow of truth. "I think it best for us
both." So she thinks for me! She not only decides, she thinks; she is
the active principle; 'tis mine to submit.--A certain presumption was in