There is
no suavity about the movements of women who have no soul in them. Our
wills were opposed, and we did not keep step together. Words are
wanting to describe this outward dissonance between two beings; we are
not accustomed to read a thought in a movement. We instinctively feel
this phenomenon of our nature, but it cannot be expressed.
"I did not dissect my sensations during those violent seizures of
passion," Raphael went on, after a moment of silence, as if he were
replying to an objection raised by himself. "I did not analyze my
pleasures nor count my heartbeats then, as a miser scrutinizes and
weighs his gold pieces. No; experience sheds its melancholy light over
the events of the past to-day, and memory brings these pictures back,
as the sea-waves in fair weather cast up fragment after fragment of
the debris of a wrecked vessel upon the strand.
"'It is in your power to render me a rather important service,' said
the countess, looking at me in an embarrassed way. 'After confiding in
you my aversion to lovers, I feel myself more at liberty to entreat
your good offices in the name of friendship. Will there not be very
much more merit in obliging me to-day?' she asked, laughing.
"I looked at her in anguish.
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