"
Then Mme de Langeais felt afraid. The shrewd old noble's words
sounded like a prophecy. The next day she tried to turn love to
hate. She was harsh, exacting, irritable, unbearable; Montriveau
disarmed her with angelic sweetness. She so little knew the
great generosity of a large nature, that the kindly jests with
which her first complaints were met went to her heart. She
sought a quarrel, and found proofs of affection. She persisted.
"When a man idolizes you, how can he have vexed you?" asked
Armand.
"You do not vex me," she answered, suddenly grown gentle and
submissive. "But why do you wish to compromise me? For me you
ought to be nothing but a _friend_. Do you not know it? I wish I
could see that you had the instincts, the delicacy of real
friendship, so that I might lose neither your respect nor the
pleasure that your presence gives me."
"Nothing but your _friend_!" he cried out. The terrible word
sent an electric shock through his brain. "On the faith of
these happy hours that you grant me, I sleep and wake in your
heart. And now today, for no reason, you are pleased to destroy
all the secret hopes by which I live. You have required promises
of such constancy in me, you have said so much of your horror of
women made up of nothing but caprice; and now do you wish me to
understand that, like other women here in Paris, you have
passions, and know nothing of love? If so, why did you ask my
life of me? why did you accept it?"
"I was wrong, my friend.
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