"Well, I give you my word that that will soon come. Oh! it's of no use for you to look up at the sky; I tell you that you are in love with Mademoiselle Constance. I don't charge you with it as a crime; it's perfectly natural: she is pretty, she attracts you--and why not? But what I do blame is your prowling about in the woods after that poor little creature who has no knowledge of the world or men, and who yielded to your seductions and believed all your oaths, because they were the first oaths she had ever heard. What was wrong was your inspiring in her heart an exalted passion, which will ruin her life, because she has nothing there in the woods to divert her thoughts. If, yielding to a sudden temptation, you had seduced her and then left her at once, the pain would have been sharp, but it wouldn't have lasted so long; she wouldn't have had time to love you so dearly; but you always have to run things into the ground. You abandon everything to live in the woods--in order not to be separated from her; for six weeks, you don't leave her for a single moment; you eat nuts together and lie on the grass; you would live on roots, if need be, in order to speak of love to her. How in the devil do you think that that can fail to turn her head? The girl has reached a point where she cannot do without you; she lives and breathes for you alone; she imagines that that sort of life will last forever; and then--presto! my gentleman vanishes; good-evening, it's all over! Weep, and tear your hair! you won't see him again.--But I have seen her, and I'm almighty sorry; for I fancy that I see her still, pale, dishevelled, walking without seeing, listening without hearing, and, absorbed by a single thought, keeping her tear-dimmed eyes fixed on the road by which he went away; then returning to her poor cabin, to weep on; and so again the next day, and forever! And remember that she has not even the one poor consolation of the unhappy, the power to complain and pour her sorrows into a friend's bosom. That is what you have caused, and it isn't the noblest chapter in your history. That is what you would have avoided if you had not followed the guidance of your romantic ideas, or if you had paid your addresses to women of the world only." Frédéric made no response; he seemed to be lost in thought.