and magnificent dream which is always hovering over our hopes.

He had finished the Countess's portrait, the best, certainly, that
he ever had painted, for he had discovered and crystallized
that inexpressible something which a painter seldom succeeds in
unveiling--that reflection, that mystery, that physiognomy of the soul,
which passes intangibly across a face.

Months rolled by, then years, which hardly loosened the tie that united
the Comtesse de Guilleroy and the painter, Olivier Bertin. With him
it was no longer the exaltation of the beginning, but a calm, deep
affection, a sort of loving friendship that had become a habit.

With her, on the contrary, the passionate, persistent attachment of
certain women who give themselves to a man wholly and forever was always
growing. Honest and straight in adulterous love as they might have been
in marriage, they devote themselves to a single object with a tenderness
from which nothing can turn them. Not only do they love the lover, but
they wish to love him, and, with eyes on him alone, they so fill their
hearts with thoughts of him that nothing strange can thenceforth enter
there. They have bound their lives resolutely, as one who knows how to
swim, yet wishes to die, ties his hands together before leaping from a
high bridge into the water.

But from the moment when the Countess had yielded, she was assailed by
fears for Bertin's constancy. Nothing held him but his masculine will,
his caprice, his passing fancy for a woman he had met one day just as
he had already met so many others! She realized that he was so free,
so susceptible to temptation--he who lived without duties, habits, or
scruples, like all men! He was handsome, celebrated, much sought after,