breathlessly the misfortunes by which you had expiated your flight and their sorrow. Sometimes you took me for Leoni, and poured out crushing reproaches upon me; at other times you thought that you were with him in Switzerland, and you embraced me passionately. It would have been easy for me then to abuse your error, and the love that was gaining headway in my breast made your frantic caresses a veritable torture. But I would have died rather than yield to my desires, and the villainy of Lord Edwards, of which you talked constantly, seems to me the most degrading infamy of which a man could be guilty. At last I had the good fortune to save your life and your reason, my dear Juliette. Since then I have suffered bitterly, and I have been very happy through you. I am a fool perhaps not to be content with the friendship and the possession of such a woman as you, but my love is insatiable. I long to be loved as Leoni was, and I torment you with that foolish ambition. I have not his eloquence and his fascinations, but I love you. I have not deceived you; I will never deceive you. It is time for your heart, so long shattered by fatigue, to find rest while sleeping on mine. Juliette! Juliette! when will you love me as you are capable of loving?" "Now and forever," she replied. "You saved me, you cured me, and you love me. I was mad, I see it now, to love such a man. All this that I have told you has brought before my eyes anew a multitude of vile things. Now I feel nothing but horror for the past, and I do not mean to recur to it again. You have done well to let me tell it all to you. I am calm now, and I feel that I can never again love his memory. You are my friend; you are my savior, my brother and my lover." "Say your husband too, Juliette, I implore you!" "My husband, if you will," she said, embracing me with a fondness which she had never manifested so warmly, and which brought tears of joy and gratitude to my eyes. XXIII I awoke the next day so happy that I thought no more about leaving Venice. The weather was superb, the sun as mild as in spring. Fashionably dressed women thronged the quays and laughed at the jests of the maskers, who, half reclining on the rails of the bridges, teased the passers-by, and made impertinent and flattering remarks to the ugly and pretty women respectively. It was Mardi Gras; a sad anniversary for Juliette. I was anxious to distract her thoughts, so suggested that we should go out, and she agreed.