“Cowards threaten!” “And brave souls act. Well, Louison, you certainly are no coward; and yet your speech had a threat in it. Tell me why?” “Ah, Mirabeau! It is only a little thing. During some years—that is, ever since I was an innocent girl, who never committed a greater sin than plucking a few clusters where the grapes first ripened into purple—I have loved you. It was not much, only a human soul flung at the feet of a man who has not yet trampled it under his heel. But this soul was all I had—and you took it. For your sake I worked hard, studied, learned all those arts by which women gain influence in the world; gloried in my beauty, and in that keen wit which is a weapon of power in these days, all because they might make me more dear and more useful to you. In the scale of your glory I flung my life. Is it strange that I ask something back; that out of the whole of an existence I lavished on you I ask a ray of light; only that which the moon takes from the sun, and feel defrauded when it is withheld?” The smile broadened and grew brighter on Mirabeau’s face as the young woman made this passionate address. He loved to be adored; and the intellect of this woman gave piquancy to her homage; without that she would have been nothing to him, with it she had a hold upon his interests and his vanity stronger, by far, than any woman had ever possessed over his affections. No man living had greater talent for turning the genius of other people to his own account than Mirabeau. Men and women were alike made available to his popularity. He had no desire to quarrel with the handsome young female, whose words, taking the form of passionate pleading, were sufficient to convince him of the power he still possessed. Louison saw the self-satisfied smile, and it stung her. She broke forth with passionate vehemence. “But love like mine must have full love in return; faith like mine must meet answering faith. If I have been strong as a woman, I have also been trusting as a child. Deceive me once, and you open my eyes forever; cease to be my entire friend, and you make me your bitterest enemy. Keep no secrets from me; if you attempt it, I will find them out, and then they are my property. I warn you now, in right or in wrong, make me your confidant.” It would have been well for Mirabeau had he then and there taken the woman at her word; but, like all social traitors, he had no faith in the sex, and so only turned on his side and gazed on her flushed face in wonder that any one would believe him weak enough to trust one woman with the secrets of another.