She paused, and both were silent; for there was something in the words which she spoke which had a deeper effect upon Albert of Morseiul than he had imagined any thing could have produced. He struggled against himself, however, and then replied, "You took me up too quickly, lady. I was not going to say that it is impossible for woman to love twice. I do not know, I cannot judge; but I think it very possible that the ancients, to whom you have just alluded, may have intended to figure love under the image of the ph[oe]nix; and I do fully believe that many a woman may have fancied herself in love a dozen times before she was so really." "Fancy herself in love!" exclaimed Clémence, in a tone almost indignant. "Fancy herself in love, Monsieur de Morseiul! I should think it less difficult to love twice than to fancy one's self in love at all, if one were not really so. We may perhaps fancy qualities in a person who does not truly possess them, and thus, adorned by our own imagination, may love him; but still it is not that we fancy we are in love, but are really in love with the creature of our fancy. However, I will talk about it no more. It is a thing that does not do to think of. I wonder if ever there was a man that was really worth loving." The Count replied, but he could not get her to pursue the subject any farther; she studiously rambled away to other things; and, after speaking of some matters of minor import, darted back at once to the point at which the conversation had begun, as if the rest had been but a temporary dream, interpolated as it were between matters of more serious moment. The Count had been endeavouring to bring her back to the subject of the heart's feelings; for though he felt that it was a dangerous one--a most dangerous one--one that might well lead to words that could never be recalled, yet he longed to gain some insight into that heart which he could not but think was filled with finer things than she suffered to appear. She would not listen, however, nor be led, and replied as if she had not in the slightest degree attended to what he had been saying,--