"I must be more brief if I am ever to finish my story. And why, indeed, picture in detail to a man like you what you understand without comment, and what, understanding, you pardon! Poor Claudine! She thought she needed no forgiveness. She thought she was in the right when she abandoned herself without resistance to a passion, which indeed would seem to have brooked no resistance. I had never observed anything like this with any other woman--least of all, God be thanked, with myself. I should simply not have deemed it possible. It was like a hurricane--a cyclone; it was simply awful! I trembled for the reason, for the very life of the unhappy woman: for she could not conceal from herself that her passion was not returned, although she, being anyhow little accustomed to control herself, and being now solely engaged by her own overpowering feelings, neither would nor could hide her great love from the handsome young officer. Fortunately for her, the catastrophe was not long in coming. Nay, rather, she brought it about herself, resolute and energetic as she always was; and now feeling that so, and only so, she might yet save herself from herself, she forced from him the avowal that his heart was no longer free, that it was entirely filled by his love for a charming young girl whose acquaintance he had made in a distant garrison-town where a portion of his regiment had until recently been quartered, and to whom he had become engaged in secret. The youth was bitterly poor, the girl's parents were rich and proud; he wanted to have his captain's commission before he ventured to apply for her hand, and--dear, dear--they were both of them so young and so romantic, and so fond of each other, and in their love they were so sure of the future. Why then be niggardly with the moment? And secrecy is like a phantastic mask through the hollow apertures of which the light in the eyes of those we love shines with doubly seductive brilliancy. "Claudine was at first utterly crushed by a blow which, in spite of everything, had found her unprepared--for where is the loving heart that would willingly let the last faint gleam of hope die out? Then there came a fierce burst of jealous resentment, raging like a fever; then she endeavoured to wrap herself in her pride and to see in the idol of her heart the last and least of men; and ultimately she grovelled at his feet and entreated him to look upon her as his slave, and the slave of her whom he loved, and to ask from her what he would, to bid her do what he chose, and do it she would by all that she held sacred! "Nor was it long before he took her at her word.