"Can he be playing with me?" she said, as the clocks struck
midnight.
She grew white; her teeth chattered; she struck her hands
together and leapt up and crossed the boudoir, recollecting as
she did so how often he had come thither without a summons. But
she resigned herself. Had she not seen him grow pale, and start
up under the stinging barbs of irony? Then Mme de Langeais felt
the horror of the woman's appointed lot; a man's is the active
part, a woman must wait passively when she loves. If a woman
goes beyond her beloved, she makes a mistake which few men can
forgive; almost every man would feel that a woman lowers herself
by this piece of angelic flattery. But Armand's was a great
nature; he surely must be one of the very few who can repay such
exceeding love by love that lasts forever.
"Well, I will make the advance," she told herself, as she
tossed on her bed and found no sleep there; "I will go to him.
I will not weary myself with holding out a hand to him, but I
will hold it out. A man of a thousand will see a promise of love
and constancy in every step that a woman takes towards him. Yes,
the angels must come down from heaven to reach men; and I wish to
be an angel for him."
Next day she wrote. It was a billet of the kind in which the
intellects of the ten thousand Sevignes that Paris now can number
particularly excel. And yet only a Duchesse de Langeais, brought
up by Mme la Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, could have written
that delicious note; no other woman could complain without
lowering herself; could spread wings in such a flight without
draggling her pinions in humiliation; rise gracefully in revolt;
scold without giving offence; and pardon without compromising her
personal dignity.
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