affected contemptuously to avoid him, did all that she could to make him fall in with her so that she might tell him all that was rankling in her. Christophe was only touched by Rosa's attitude. The girl condemned him more harshly even than his family. Not that this new love of Christophe's seemed to her to destroy her last chances of being loved by him: she knew that she had no chance left--(although perhaps she went on hoping: she always hoped).--But she had made an idol of Christophe: and that idol had crumbled away. It was the worst sorrow for her ... yes, a sorrow more cruel to the innocence and honesty of her heart, than being disdained and forgotten by him. Brought up puritanically, with a narrow code of morality, in which she believed passionately, what she had heard about Christophe had not only brought her to despair but had broken her heart. She had suffered already when he was in love with Sabine: she had begun then to lose some of her illusions about her hero. That Christophe could love so commonplace a creature seemed to her inexplicable and inglorious. But at least that love was pure, and Sabine was not unworthy of it. And in the end death had passed over it and sanctified it.... But that at once Christophe should love another woman,--and such a woman!--was base, and odious! She took upon herself the defense of the dead woman against him. She could not forgive him for having forgotten her.... Alas! He was thinking of her more than she: but she never thought that in a passionate heart there might be room for two sentiments at once: she thought it impossible to be faithful to the past without sacrifice of the present. Pure and cold, she had no idea of life or of Christophe: everything in her eyes was pure, narrow, submissive to duty, like herself. Modest of soul, modest of herself, she had only one source of pride: purity: she demanded it of herself and of others. She could not forgive Christophe for having so lowered himself, and she would never forgive him. Christophe tried to talk to her, though not to explain himself--(what could he say to her? what could he say to a little puritanical and naïve girl?).--He would have liked to assure her that he was her friend, that he wished for her esteem, and had still the right to it He wished to prevent her absurdly estranging herself from him.--But Rosa avoided him in stern silence: he felt that she despised him. He was both sorry and angry. He felt that he did not deserve such contempt; and yet in the end he was bowled over by it: and thought himself guilty. Of all the reproaches cast against him the most bitter came from himself when he thought of Sabine. He tormented himself. "Oh! God, how is it possible? What sort of creature am I?..."