"MADAME
"I can not leave without bidding you adieu, and once more demanding your forgiveness.
"Will you permit me?
"CAMORS."
This letter he was about despatching, when he received one containing the following words:
"I shall be happy, Monsieur, if you will call upon me to-day, about
four o'clock.
"ELISE DE TECLE."
Upon which M. de Camors threw his own note in the fire, as entirely superfluous.
No matter what interpretation he put upon this note, it was an evident sign that love had triumphed and that virtue was defeated; for, after what had passed the previous evening between Madame de Tecle and himself, there was only one course for a virtuous woman to take; and that was never to see him again. To see him was to pardon him; to pardon him was to surrender herself to him, with or without circumlocution. Camors did not allow himself to deplore any further an adventure which had so suddenly lost its gravity. He soliloquized on the weakness of women. He thought it bad taste in Madame de Tecle not to have maintained longer the high ideal his innocence had created for her. Anticipating the disenchantment which follows possession, he already saw her deprived of all her prestige, and ticketed in the museum of his amorous souvenirs.
Nevertheless, when he approached her house, and had the feeling of her near presence, he was troubled. Doubt—and anxiety assailed him. When he saw through the trees the window of her room, his heart throbbed so violently that he had to sit down on the root of a tree for a moment.
"I love her like a madman!" he murmured; then leaping up suddenly he exclaimed, "But she is only a woman, after all—I shall go on!"