She showed me how she had changed her coiffure which had displeased me, and told me how she had passed the day arranging her hair to suit my taste; how she had taken down a villainous black picture frame that had offended my eye; how she had renewed the flowers; she recounted all she had done since she had known me, how she had seen me suffer and how she had suffered herself; how she had thought of leaving the country, of fleeing from her love; how she had employed every precaution against me; how she had sought advice from her aunt, from Mercanson and from the cure; how she had vowed to herself that she would die rather than yield, and how all that had been dissipated by a single word of mine, a glance, an incident; and with every confession, a kiss. She said that whatever I saw in her room that pleased my taste, whatever bagatelle on her table attracted my attention, she would give me; that whatever she did in the future, in the morning, in the evening, at any hour, I should regulate as I pleased; that the judgments of the world did not concern her; that if she had appeared to care for them, it was only to send me away; but that she wished to be happy and close her ears; that she was thirty years of age and had not long to be loved by me. "And you will love me a long time? Are those fine words with which you have beguiled me, true?" And then, loving reproaches because I had been late in coming to her; that she had put on her slippers in order that I might see her foot but that she was no longer beautiful; that she could wish she were; that she was, at fifteen. She went here and there, silly with love, crimson with joy; and she did not know what to imagine, what to say or do, in order to give herself and all that she had. I was lying on the sofa; I felt, at every word she spoke, a bad hour of my past life slipping away from me. I watched the star of love rising in my sky, and it seemed to me I was like a tree filled with sap that shakes off its dry leaves in order to attire itself in new foliage. She sat down at the piano and told me she was going to play an air by Stradella. I love more than all else, sacred music, and that morceau which she sang for me a number of times, gave me great pleasure. "Yes," she said when she had finished, "but you are very much mistaken, the air is mine, and I have made you believe it was Stradella's." "It is yours?" "Yes, and I told you it was by Stradella, in order to see what you would say of it. I never play my own music, when I happen to compose any; but I wanted to try it with you, and you see it has succeeded, since you were deceived." What a monstrous machine is man! What could be more innocent? A bright child might have adopted that ruse to surprise his teacher. She laughed heartily the while, but I felt a strange coldness as though a cloud had settled on me; my countenance changed. "What is the matter?" she asked. "Are you ill?" "It is nothing; play that air again."