My mind inclined this way and that as I rode. Now I saw how strong was the evidence against her, yet I refused to be convinced by it before I should hear what she might have to say. Now I conjured up her image before me, and then all the evidence was naught. It was impossible that this face, of all faces in the world, could have been a mask to conceal falsehood and treachery, that this voice could have lied in its sweet and sorrowful tones, that her appearance of grief could have been but a pretence, that her seemingly unconscious signs of love could have been simulation! Yet had not the gypsy sung of the false flame of woman's love? It is true, she had bade me heed these words. Would she have done so had her own appearance of love been false? Perhaps it was this very thought, the very improbability of a false woman's warning a man against woman's treachery, that had made her do so, that I might the less readily on occasion believe her false. Who can tell the resources and devices of a subtle woman? What? Was I doubting her? Was I believing the story? Was I, with my closer knowledge of her, with my experience of the freaks of circumstance, with my perception of her heart, to accept the first apparent deduction from the few facts at hand, as blind, unthinking, undiscriminating soldiers, Blaise and Frojac, had done? Did I not know of what kind of woman she was? She was no Mlle. d'Arency. Yet, who knows but that poor De Noyard had believed Mlle. d'Arency true? Might he not, with the eyes of love, have seen in her as pure and spotless a creature as I had seen in Mlle. de Varion? Do the eyes of love, then, deceive? Is the confidence of lovers never to be relied on? But I must have read her heart aright. Surely her heart had spoken to mine. Surely its voice was that of truth. Surely I knew her. Were not her eyes to be believed. Were not truth, goodness, gentleness, love, written on her face? Yet, how went the gypsy's song,--the one we had heard him sing at Godeau's inn, by the forest road? "But, ah, the sadness of the day When woman shows her treason! And, oh, the price we have to pay For joys that have their season! Her look of love is but a mask For plots that she is weaving. Alas, for those who fondly bask In smiles that are deceiving!" Might this, then, be true of any woman? So many men had found it out. The eyes of so many had been opened at last. Was I still a fool, had I learned so little of women, had my experience with Mlle. d'Arency taught me only to beware of women outwardly like her, did I need a separate lesson for each different woman on whom I might set my heart? Was it my peculiar lot to be twice deceived in the same way?