Bressant

"If you care for me--if I can be every thing to you"--Cornelia's voice

was broken and tossed upon the uncontrolled waves of fighting emotions,

and she could give little care to the form and manner of her speech.

"I love you--of course I love you!--what else is there for me to do? But

I've been all this time trying to find out what love was. I thought I

loved Sophie, you know."

Bressant's strange words and altered manner dismayed Cornelia. What was

the matter with him? She could not get it out of her head that some

awful event must have happened, but she knew not how to frame inquiries.

Bressant continued--a determined levity in his tone was yet occasionally

broken down by a stroke of feeling terribly real: "I was a great fool--you should have told me; you knew more about it

than I did. It was my self-conceit--I thought nothing was too good for

me. When I saw you I thought you were the flower of the world, so I

wanted you. Well--you are--the flower of the world!"

"He does love me!" said Cornelia to herself, and she knew a momentary

pang of bliss which no consideration of honor or rectitude had power to

dull or diminish.

"But, afterward," he went on, his voice lowering for an instant, "I saw

an angel--something above all the flowers of this world--and I was fool

enough to imagine she would suit me better still. You never thought so,

did you, Cornelia?" he added, with a half laugh; "well--you should have

told me!"

How he dragged her up and down, and struck her where she was most

defenseless! Did he do it on purpose, or unconsciously?

"I mistook worship for love--that was the trouble, I fancy. Luckily, I

found out in time it won't do to love what is highest--it can only make

one mad. Love what you can understand--that's the way! See how wise I've

become."

Bressant's laugh affected Cornelia like a deadly drug. Her speech was

fettered, and she moved without her own will or guidance.

"I found out--just in time--that I needed more body and less soul--less

goodness and--more Cornelia!" he concluded, epigrammatically.

So this was her position. It could hardly be more humiliating. Yet how

could she rebel? for was not the yoke of her own manufacture? Indeed,

had she been put to it, she might have found it a difficult matter to

distinguish between the actual relation now subsisting between Bressant

and herself, and that which she had been, for months past, striving to

effect. He had met her half-way, that was all.

But surely it was only during this absence that this idea of abandoning

Sophie, and turning to herself, had occurred to him. Half as a question,

half as an exclamation, the words found their way through Cornelia's

twitching lips-"What has happened to you since you went away?"