"
They passed backwards and forwards in his mind for a little time with no
significance. Then they gave birth to another thought. Suppose he
stayed; suppose he took advantage of the love of this girl? He looked
around the little room, showing so peacefully in the moonlight--the
religious symbols, the purity, the cleanliness, the calm poverty. He had
known the inside of the boudoirs and the bed-chambers of women of fashion
--he had seen them, at least. In them the voluptuous, the indulgent,
seemed part of the picture. But he was not a beast, that he could fail
to see what this tiny bedroom would be, if he followed his wild will.
Some terrible fate might overtake his gay pilgrimage to empire, and leave
him lost, abandoned, in a desert of ruin.
Why not give up the adventure, and come to this quiet, and this good
peace, so shutting out the stir and violence of the world?
All at once Madame Chalice came into his thoughts, swam in his sight,
and he knew that what he felt for this peasant girl was of one side of
his nature only. All of him worth the having--was any worth the having?
responded to that diffusing charm which brought so many men to the feet
of that lady of the Manor, who had lovers by the score: from such as the
Cure and the avocat, gentle and noble, and requited, to the young
Seigneur, selfish and ulterior, and unrequited.
He got to his feet quietly.
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