"Oh!" she said to me with an angelic voice, "let us leave this
dangerous spot. Resistance here is beyond our strength."

She drew me away and we left the pavilion with regret.

"Ah! how happy is she!" cried Madame de T-----.

"Whom do you mean?" I asked.

"Did I speak?" said she with a look of alarm.

And then we reached the grassy bank, and stopped there involuntarily.
"What a distance there is," she said to me, "between this place and
the pavilion!"

"Yes indeed," said I. "But must this bank be always ominous? Is there
a regret? Is there--?"

I do not know by what magic it took place; but at this point the
conversation changed and became less serious. She ventured even to
speak playfully of the pleasures of love, to eliminate from them all
moral considerations, to reduce them to their simplest elements, and
to prove that the favors of lovers were mere pleasure, that there were
no pledges--philosophically speaking--excepting those which were given
to the world, when we allowed it to penetrate our secrets and joined
it in the acts of indiscretion.

"How mild is the night," she said, "which we have by chance picked
out! Well, if there are reasons, as I suppose there are, which compel