that no woman would accept the tenderest, most delicate proofs of
a man's love during seven months, nor yield passively to the
slighter demands of passion, only to cheat love at the last. He
was waiting patiently for the sun to gain power, not doubting but
that he should receive the earliest fruits. The married woman's
hesitations and the religious scruples he could quite well
understand. He even rejoiced over those battles. He mistook the
Duchess's heartless coquetry for modesty; and he would not have
had her otherwise. So he had loved to see her devising
obstacles; was he not gradually triumphing over them? Did not
every victory won swell the meagre sum of lovers' intimacies long
denied, and at last conceded with every sign of love? Still, he
had had such leisure to taste the full sweetness of every small
successive conquest on which a lover feeds his love, that these
had come to be matters of use and wont. So far as obstacles
went, there were none now save his own awe of her; nothing else
left between him and his desire save the whims of her who allowed
him to call her Antoinette. So he made up his mind to demand
more, to demand all. Embarrassed like a young lover who cannot
dare to believe that his idol can stoop so low, he hesitated for
a long time. He passed through the experience of terrible
reactions within himself. A set purpose was annihilated by a
word, and definite resolves died within him on the threshold. He
despised himself for his weakness, and still his desire remained
unuttered. Nevertheless, one evening, after sitting in gloomy
melancholy, he brought out a fierce demand for his illegally
legitimate rights. The Duchess had not to wait for her bond-slave's
request to guess his desire. When was a man's desire a secret? And
have not women an intuitive knowledge of the meaning of certain
changes of countenance?