“Ah, M. de Tavernay,” and her voice had a note of sadness in it, “I thought you a gallant man. I thought you brave enough to approach your fate with a smile upon your lips. I thought you generous enough to make this girl who is waiting for you believe that you really loved her. Consider how much more difficult is her task. Perhaps she remembers you only as a thoughtless and unattractive boy; perhaps she also has seen some one whom she fancies she could love better; perhaps it is some one who is really better worth loving. Yet she is awaiting you, stifling her misgivings in her bosom, ready to keep her oath, although an oath is not the same thing to a woman as to a man. Nor is marriage the same thing. To a man it is an episode; to a woman it is her whole life. She belongs to the man she has married. Do you think the woman to whom you are betrothed does not realize all this? Be sure she does--and trembles at it. And you propose to make her task more difficult still. You will come to her with a sour and downcast face; you will say to her as plainly as if you spoke the words, ‘I do not love you; I take you because I must. If I were free I would not look at you a second time; I am making a martyr of myself by marrying you.’ Which do you think will be the greater martyr, monsieur, you or she? You are right in your estimate of yourself--you are wholly selfish.” I had listened with bowed head and quivering nerves. Every word burnt into me as a white-hot iron. “You are right,” I said hoarsely, when she had finished. “I am a coward--a cur. I am not really a man of honor.” “You are only a boy,” she said; and her tone was more tender. “You have been too long in your mother’s leading-strings. But you have in you the making of a man, my friend, and I know that I shall live to be proud of you.” I caught her hand and kissed it--a kiss not of love but of gratitude. I swear that at that moment passion was as dead in me as though it had never been. We went on in silence after that. I had my bitter draught to swallow, and swallow it I did without flinching, for all pretty euphemism had been stripped away. “Mademoiselle,” I said at last, “I hope that in time you will pardon me. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart that you had the courage to speak as you did just now. It was the only way to open my eyes to my real self. Believe me, I shall be brave enough to look at it steadily.” She held out her hand with a quick gesture. “I am sure you will,” she said very softly. “And let me tell you one thing more: I shall always be a better woman for having known you.”