This analogy and its contrast forced themselves upon Ely's notice, when she left the laboratory, with an intensity that completely exhausted all the physical strength that was left in her. She was no longer supported by the necessity of working for the sake of others. She was now alone, face to face with her grief. And, as often happens after any violent emotion that has been followed by too energetic efforts, she succumbed under the shock. Hardly had she reached her room than she was overpowered by an agonizing nervous headache. Such a crisis is really the shattering of the nervous system, whose strength has been exhausted by the force of will, and which has finally to surrender. Ely did not try to struggle any longer. She lay down on her bed like some one in death agony, at one o'clock, after having sent off a despatch to the one woman whose presence she felt she could support, the one woman upon whom she could rely--to Louise Brion, whose devotion she had almost forgotten during the past weeks. "She is my friend," she thought, "and our friendship is better than theirs, for the friendship of those men is made up of hate!" In the extremity of her distress she, therefore, also had recourse to the sentiment of friendship. She was mistaken in thinking that Louise was more devoted to her than was Pierre to Olivier, or than was the Archduke to Verdier. But she was not mistaken in thinking the devotion of her friend was of a different character. In reality, feminine friendship and masculine friendship have a striking difference. The latter is almost always the mortal foe of love, while the former is most often only love's complacent ally. It is rare that a man can regard with any indulgence the mistress of his friend, while a woman, of even the most upright character, has almost always a natural sympathy for her friend's lover so long as he makes her friend happy; it is because the majority of women have a tender feeling for love, for all love, for that of others as well as for that which concerns them more closely. Men, on the contrary, have an instinct which remains in them, a relic of the savage despotism of an earlier barbarism. They do not sympathize with any love that they do not feel, that they do not inspire.