He should have nothing of
her beyond the little concessions snatched in the course of
contests that she could stop at her pleasure. She had so pretty
an art of revoking the grant of yesterday, she was so much in
earnest in her purpose to remain technically virtuous, that she
felt that there was not the slightest danger for her in
preliminaries fraught with peril for a woman less sure of her
self-command. After all, the Duchess was practically separated
from her husband; a marriage long since annulled was no great
sacrifice to make to her love.
Montriveau on his side was quite happy to win the vaguest
promise, glad once for all to sweep aside, with all scruples of
conjugal fidelity, her stock of excuses for refusing herself to
his love. He had gained ground a little, and congratulated
himself. And so for a time he took unfair advantage of the
rights so hardly won. More a boy than he had ever been in his
life, he gave himself up to all the childishness that makes first
love the flower of life. He was a child again as he poured out
all his soul, all the thwarted forces that passion had given him,
upon her hands, upon the dazzling forehead that looked so pure to
his eyes; upon her fair hair; on the tufted curls where his lips
were pressed. And the Duchess, on whom his love was poured like
a flood, was vanquished by the magnetic influence of her lover's
warmth; she hesitated to begin the quarrel that must part them
forever. She was more a woman than she thought, this slight
creature, in her effort to reconcile the demands of religion with
the ever-new sensations of vanity, the semblance of pleasure
which turns a Parisienne's head.
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