Is this another of your
artifices? or is it not? You have used so many with me; how can
one think that there is any truth in you? Nothing that you do or
say has any power now to move me. That is all I have to say."
Mme de Langeais rose to her feet, with a great dignity and
humility in her bearing.
"You are right to treat me very hardly," she said, holding out
a hand to the man who did not take it; "you have not spoken
hardly enough; and I deserve this punishment."
"_I_ punish you, madame! A man must love still, to punish, must
he not? From me you must expect no feeling, nothing resembling
it. If I chose, I might be accuser and judge in my cause, and
pronounce and carry out the sentence. But I am about to fulfil a
duty, not a desire of vengeance of any kind. The cruelest
revenge of all, I think, is scorn of revenge when it is in our
power to take it. Perhaps I shall be the minister of your
pleasures; who knows? Perhaps from this time forth, as you
gracefully wear the tokens of disgrace by which society marks out
the criminal, you may perforce learn something of the convict's
sense of honour. And then, you will love!"
The Duchess sat listening; her meekness was unfeigned; it was no
coquettish device. When she spoke at last, it was after a
silence.
"Armand," she began, "it seems to me that when I resisted
love, I was obeying all the instincts of woman's modesty; I
should not have looked for such reproaches from _you_. I was weak;
you have turned all my weaknesses against me, and made so many
crimes of them.
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