Would she have done so had her
own appearance of love been false? Perhaps it was this very thought, the
very improbability of a false woman's warning a man against woman's
treachery, that had made her do so, that I might the less readily on
occasion believe her false. Who can tell the resources and devices of a
subtle woman?
What? Was I doubting her? Was I believing the story? Was I, with my
closer knowledge of her, with my experience of the freaks of
circumstance, with my perception of her heart, to accept the first
apparent deduction from the few facts at hand, as blind, unthinking,
undiscriminating soldiers, Blaise and Frojac, had done? Did I not know of
what kind of woman she was? She was no Mlle. d'Arency.
Yet, who knows but that poor De Noyard had believed Mlle. d'Arency true?
Might he not, with the eyes of love, have seen in her as pure and
spotless a creature as I had seen in Mile, de Varion? Do the eyes of
love, then, deceive? Is the confidence of lovers never to be relied on?
But I must have read her heart aright. Surely her heart had spoken to
mine. Surely its voice was that of truth. Surely I knew her. Were not her
eyes to be believed. Were not truth, goodness, gentleness, love, written
on her face?
Yet, how went the gypsy's song,--the one we had heard him sing at
Godeau's inn, by the forest road?
"But, ah, the sadness of the day
When woman shows her treason!
And, oh, the price we have to pay
For joys that have their season!
Her look of love is but a mask
For plots that she is weaving.
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