“I am sure of it, Wilfrid. Our instinct is precisely that which makes us perfect. What you men learn, we feel.” “Why, then, do you not feel how much I love you?” “Because you do not love me.” “Good God!” “If you did, would you complain of your own sufferings?” “You are terrible to-night, Seraphita. You are a demon.” “No, but I am gifted with the faculty of comprehending, and it is awful. Wilfrid, sorrow is a lamp which illumines life.” “Why did you ascend the Falberg?” “Minna will tell you. I am too weary to talk. You must talk to me,--you who know so much, who have learned all things and forgotten nothing; you who have passed through every social test. Talk to me, amuse me, I am listening.” “What can I tell you that you do not know? Besides, the request is ironical. You allow yourself no intercourse with social life; you trample on its conventions, its laws, its customs, sentiments, and sciences; you reduce them all to the proportions such things take when viewed by you beyond this universe.” “Therefore you see, my friend, that I am not a woman. You do wrong to love me. What! am I to leave the ethereal regions of my pretended strength, make myself humbly small, cringe like the hapless female of all species, that you may lift me up? and then, when I, helpless and broken, ask you for help, when I need your arm, you will repulse me! No, we can never come to terms.” “You are more maliciously unkind to-night than I have ever known you.” “Unkind!” she said, with a look which seemed to blend all feelings into one celestial emotion, “no, I am ill, I suffer, that is all. Leave me, my friend; it is your manly right. We women should ever please you, entertain you, be gay in your presence and have no whims save those that amuse you. Come, what shall I do for you, friend? Shall I sing, shall I dance, though weariness deprives me of the use of voice and limbs?--Ah! gentlemen, be we on our deathbeds, we yet must smile to please you; you call that, methinks, your right. Poor women! I pity them. Tell me, you who abandon them when they grow old, is it because they have neither hearts nor souls? Wilfrid, I am a hundred years old; leave me! leave me! go to Minna!” “Oh, my eternal love!” “Do you know the meaning of eternity? Be silent, Wilfrid. You desire me, but you do not love me. Tell me, do I not seem to you like those coquettish Parisian women?” “Certainly I no longer find you the pure celestial maiden I first saw in the church of Jarvis.” At these words Seraphita passed her hands across her brow, and when she removed them Wilfrid was amazed at the saintly expression that overspread her face. “You are right, my friend,” she said; “I do wrong whenever I set my feet upon your earth.” “Oh, Seraphita, be my star! stay where you can ever bless me with that clear light!”