"Monsieur," cried Madame de Pënâfiel, rising to her full height, "do you understand that you are speaking to me?" But she suddenly changed her haughty accent, and, clasping her hands, said: "It is enough to make me insane. I beseech you, explain yourself. What is it that you mean? Why should I wish to puzzle you? What rôle did I wish you to perform? Ah, be merciful, and do not blight the only moment of confidence, the only appeal for sympathy that I have given way to for so many long, weary months. If you only knew." "I know," said I, in the fiercest and most insulting way, as I approached her, so that I might place my foot on the medallion, and crush it,--"I know, madame, that if I were a woman, and a man should scorn my love, I would rather die of shame and despair than to make the first comer, who cared nothing about them, such humiliating confessions, as weak and silly for the one who tells them as they are revolting and wearisome to the one who is obliged to hear them." "Monsieur, how dare you be so audacious? How dare you to suppose--?" "This!" said I, pointing with a scornful look at the portrait at her feet; then, pressing my boot on the medallion, I crushed the crystal. "It is a sacrilege!" cried out Madame de Pënâfiel, quickly stooping to seize the portrait, which she took in her two hands, and turned on me her eyes that were blazing with indignation. "It may be sacrilege, madame, but I treat your divinity as well as he treats you." Then I bowed myself out. CHAPTER XXII CONTRADICTIONS After this interview, my anger and jealousy were for some hours so furious that the only thing I regretted was not to have been even more cruel and insolent to Madame de Pënâfiel. By the violence of these transports of rage, I recognised the extent of my love for her,--a love whose depths I had not before sounded. This medallion that I had discovered was to my eyes sufficient proof of the truth of my last suspicions, and if they were true, why should not those other stories be true, that had distressed me so at first? Now I no longer believed that she had wished to force me into confiding in her so that she might mock at me afterwards. I thought that another refused to requite the love that I would have given my life to obtain.