“‘I found her kneeling—no! not kneeling, prostrate—before her crucifix, pale as death, her eyes dry and very red, like eyes that have wept many bitter tears. I took her in my arms, seated her by my side, and presently on my knees, and told her I could not believe what her confessor had just been telling me was true.

“‘But here she interrupted me to assure me with a heart-broken voice and look that it was true, what he had said; and at this point, more and more anxious and wondering, I asked her who it was that…

“‘I left the sentence unfinished.…The terrible moment was come! She had her head and face on my shoulder…but I could see the blush of shame burning on her neck behind, and feel her shudder. The same leaden silence she had opposed to her father confessor, she now opposed to me. She was impenetrable.

““It must be some one very much beneath you, since you are so deeply ashamed?…’ I said, trying to make her speak in self-exculpation, for I knew she had plenty of pride.

“‘But still the same silence, the same burying of her head on my shoulder. This lasted what seemed to me an infinity of time, when suddenly she said, without lifting her head: ‘Swear you will forgive me, mother!’

“‘I swore everything she asked me, at the risk of perjuring myself a hundred times over—little I cared! I was boiling with impatience—boiling.…I thought my skull would burst and let my brains out.…

““Well, then! it was Monsieur de Ravila,’ she whispered, without changing her position in my arms.

“‘Oh! the shock of hearing that name, Amédée! At one fell swoop I was receiving full and condign punishment for the great fault of my life, and my heart quailed within me! You are so terrible a man where women are concerned, you have made me so fearful of rivals, that those fatal words of doubt, ‘why not?’—so heartrending when spoken of the man you love, yet suspect—rose involuntarily to my lips. What I felt, however, I had resolution enough left to hide from the cruel child, who had, it may be, guessed her mother’s guilty secret.

““Monsieur de Ravila!’ I ejaculated in a tone I feared must betray everything; ‘why, you never even speak to him!’—‘You avoid him,’ I was going to add, for my anger was rising, I felt it was.…‘You are surely very deceitful, the pair of you!’—But I refrained: was I not bound to learn the details, one by one, of this vile tale of seduction?…I began to question her with an enforced gentleness I thought would have killed me, when she released me from the torture of the rack, saying with perfect naïveté:

““It was one evening, mother. He was in the big arm-chair by the fireside, facing the sofa.…He sat there ever so long, then presently got up, and I—I had the misfortune to go and sit down in the same chair after him. Oh! mamma…it was just as if I had fallen into a flame of fire. I wanted to get up, but I could not…for my heart had stopped beating! and I felt…Oh! mamma, mamma, I felt…that what hurt me so…was a baby!…””

The marquise laughed, Ravila said, when she told him the story; but not one of the twelve women surrounding the table as much as thought of laughing—nor Ravila either.

‘And this, ladies, believe me or not, as you please,’ he added by way of conclusion, ‘I consider the greatest triumph of my life, the passion I am proudest of having inspired.’

And with this he fell silent—a silence they left unbroken one and all. His auditors were pensive.…Had they understood his meaning?

What time Joseph was a slave in the Lady Potiphar’s household, he was so handsome, says the Koran, that, in their dreamy state, the women he waited on at table used to cut their fingers with their knives as