and pure conscience unspotted by life; and she suffered because he did feel thus, and so unconsciously condemned her past. She made him open his mind to her, and always she found at the bottom this idea, natural to an innocent soul, that if love may be pardoned for everything, nothing should be pardoned to caprice, and that a woman of noble heart could not love a second time. When Hautefeuille would make some remark like this, which revealed his absolute and naïve faith in the singleness and uniqueness of true love, inevitably, implacably, Olivier would reappear before the inward eye of the poor woman. Wherever they were, in the silent patio strewn with camellia leaves, under the murmuring pines of the Villa Ellenrock, on the field at La Napoule, where the golf players moved amid the freshest and softest of landscapes, all the marvellous scenery of the South would vanish, disappear--the palms and orange trees, the ravines, the blue sky and the luminous sea, and the man she loved. She would see nothing before her but the cruel eyes and evil smile of her old lover at Rome. In a sudden half hallucination she would hear him speaking to Pierre. Then all her happy forces would suddenly be arrested. Her eyelids would quiver, her mouth gasp for air, her features contract with pain, her breast shudder as though pierced by a knife; and, as at present, her tender and unconscious tormentor would ask, "What is the matter?" with an eager solicitude that at the same time tortured and consoled her; and she would answer, as now, with one of those little falsehoods for which true love cannot forgive itself. For hearts of a certain depth of feeling, complete and total sincerity is a need that is almost physical, like hunger and thirst. What an inoffensive deception it was! And yet Ely had once more a feeling of remorse at giving this explanation of her sudden distress:-- "It is a chill that has come over me. The night comes so quickly in this country, with such a sudden fall of temperature." And while the young man was helping to envelop her in her cloak, she said, in a tone that contrasted with the insignificance of her remark:-- "Look how the sea has changed with the sinking sun; how dark it has grown--almost black--and what a deep blue the sky is. It is as though all nature had suddenly been chilled. How beautiful it is yet, but a beauty in which you feel the approach of shadows."