At three-and-twenty, diffidence nearly always rules a man's conduct;
he is perplexed with a young girl's shyness, a girl's trouble; he is
afraid lest he should express his love ill, sees nothing but
difficulties, and takes alarm at them; he would be bolder if he loved
less, for he has no confidence in himself, and with a growing sense of
the cost of happiness comes a conviction that the woman he loves
cannot easily be won; perhaps, too, he is giving himself up too
entirely to his own pleasure, and fears that he can give none; and
when, for his misfortune, his idol inspires him with awe, he worships
in secret and afar, and unless his love is guessed, it dies away. Then
it often happens that one of these dead early loves lingers on, bright
with illusions in many a young heart. What man is there but keeps
within him these virgin memories that grow fairer every time they rise
before him, memories that hold up to him the ideal of perfect bliss?
Such recollections are like children who die in the flower of
childhood, before their parents have known anything of them but their
smiles.
So M. de Nueil came home from Courcelles, the victim of a mood fraught
with desperate resolutions. Even now he felt that Mme. de Beauseant
was one of the conditions of his existence, and that death would be
preferable to life without her.
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