"And that is what I reproach you for," said Thérèse. "Ah! what can you expect!" cried Palmer; "I have been so miserably deceived in my life! That wretched woman stirred up a whole world of bitterness and contempt in me." "And that contempt overflowed on me!" "Oh! don't say so, Thérèse!" "But I, too, have been deceived," she rejoined, "and I believe in you none the less." "Let us say no more about it, my love; I regret that I have been driven to tell you the story of my past. You will believe that it may react on my future, and that, like Laurent, I shall make you pay for the treachery with which I have been sated. Come, come, my dear Thérèse, let us have done with these depressing thoughts. This place you are in is enough to give one the blues. The boat is waiting; come and take up your quarters at Spezzia." "No," said Thérèse, "I shall stay here." "What? what does this mean? hard feeling between us?" "No, no, my dear Dick," she replied, offering him her hand; "I can never be angry with you. Oh! I implore you, let our affection be ideally sincere; for my part, I will do all that it is possible for a trustful heart to do to that end; but I did not know that you were jealous, whereas you were and you admit it. Be sure that it is not in my power to avoid suffering keenly from your jealousy. It is so entirely opposed to what you promised me, that I cannot help asking myself whither we are going now, and why it was necessary that, on making my escape from a hell, I should enter a purgatory, when I aspired to naught save repose and solitude.--Not for myself alone do I dread these new tortures which seem to be brewing for me; if it were possible that in love one of the two should be happy while the other suffers, the path of self-sacrifice would be all marked out and easy to follow; but, as you see, that is not the case: I cannot have a moment's pain that you do not feel. So here am I, who sought to render my life inoffensive, in a fair way to ruin your life, and I am beginning to make a man unhappy! No, Palmer, believe me, we thought that we knew each other, but we did not. What attracted me in you was a trait which you have already lost--confidence. Don't you understand that, debased as I was, I needed that, and nothing else, in order to love you? If I should now accept your affection with its blemishes and weaknesses, with its doubts and tempests, would you not be justified in saying to yourself that I was influenced by selfish motives in marrying you? Oh! do not say that idea will never occur to you; it will occur to you in spite of yourself. I know too well how a person goes from one suspicion to another, and what a steep incline hurries us from a first disenchantment to humiliating repulsion! Now I, for my part, have drunk enough of that gall! I want no more of it, and I do not assume too much in saying I am no longer capable of undergoing what I have undergone; I told you so the very first day, and, although you may