Oh, it is wrong of a woman to yield to
such intoxication when she must not and cannot make any return."
"I understand. You have merely been coquetting with me,
and----"
"Coquetting?" she repeated. "I detest coquetry. A coquette
Armand, makes promises to many, and gives herself to none; and a
woman who keeps such promises is a libertine. This much I
believed I had grasped of our code. But to be melancholy with
humorists, gay with the frivolous, and politic with ambitious
souls; to listen to a babbler with every appearance of
admiration, to talk of war with a soldier, wax enthusiastic with
philanthropists over the good of the nation, and to give to each
one his little dole of flattery--it seems to me that this is as
much a matter of necessity as dress, diamonds, and gloves, or
flowers in one's hair. Such talk is the moral counterpart of the
toilette. You take it up and lay it aside with the plumed
head-dress. Do you call this coquetry? Why, I have never
treated you as I treat everyone else. With you, my friend, I am
sincere. Have I not always shared your views, and when you
convinced me after a discussion, was I not always perfectly glad?
In short, I love you, but only as a devout and pure woman may
love. I have thought it over. I am a married woman, Armand. My
way of life with M. de Langeais gives me liberty to bestow my
heart; but law and custom leave me no right to dispose of my
person. If a woman loses her honour, she is an outcast in any
rank of life; and I have yet to meet with a single example of a
man that realizes all that our sacrifices demand of him in such a
case.
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