“Leave me, I pray you!” she cried, with an impetuous gesture of her hand, as she sank upon the sofa, and buried her face in her hands. Of course Camors did not obey. He seated himself by her. In a little while Juliette awoke from her trance; but she awoke a lost woman! How bitter was that awakening! She measured at a first glance the depth of the awful abyss into which she had suddenly plunged. Her husband, her mother, her infant, whirled like spectres in the mad chaos of her brain. Sensible of the anguish of an irreparable wrong, she rose, passed her hand vacantly across her brow, and muttering, “Oh, God! oh, God!” peered vainly into the dark for light--hope--refuge! There was none! Her tortured soul cast herself utterly on that of her lover. She turned her swimming eyes on him and said: “How you must despise me!” Camors, half kneeling on the carpet near her, kissed her hand indifferently and half raised his shoulders in sign of denial. “Is it not so?” she repeated. “Answer me, Louis.” His face wore a strange, cruel smile--“Do not insist on an answer, I pray you,” he said. “Then I am right? You do despise me?” Camors turned himself abruptly full toward her, looked straight in her face, and said, in a cold, hard voice, “I do!” To this cruel speech the poor child replied by a wild cry that seemed to rend her, while her eyes dilated as if under the influence of strong poison. Camors strode across the room, then returned and stood by her as he said, in a quick, violent tone: “You think I am brutal? Perhaps I am, but that can matter little now. After the irreparable wrong I have done you, there is one service--and only one which I can now render you. I do it now, and tell you the truth. Understand me clearly; women who fall do not judge themselves more harshly than their accomplices judge them. For myself, what would you have me think of you? “To his misfortune and my shame, I have known your husband since his boyhood. There is not a drop of blood in his veins that does not throb for you; there is not a thought of his day nor a dream of his night that is not yours; your every comfort comes from his sacrifices--your every joy from his exertion! See what he is to you! “You have only seen my name in the journals; you have seen me ride by your window; I have talked a few times with you, and you yield to me in one moment the whole of his life with your own--the whole of his happiness with your own. “I tell you, woman, every man like me, who abuses your vanity and your weakness and afterward tells you he esteems you--lies! And if after all you still believe he loves you, you do yourself fresh injury. No: we soon learn to hate those irksome ties that become duties where we only sought pleasures; and the first effort after they are formed is to shatter them.