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Now, who was this woman? What did he know about her? Everything and
nothing. She was a duchess, that he knew; he knew, also, that she was
beautiful and rich; that she had liveries, lackeys, pages, and footmen
running with torches by the side of her coroneted carriage. He knew that
she was in love with him; at least she said so. Of everything else he
was ignorant. He knew her title, but not her name. He knew her thought;
he knew not her life. Was she married, widow, maiden? Was she free? Of
what family was she? Were there snares, traps, dangers about her? Of the
gallantry existing on the idle heights of society; the caves on those
summits, in which savage charmers dream amid the scattered skeletons of
the loves which they have already preyed on; of the extent of tragic
cynicism to which the experiments of a woman may attain who believes
herself to be beyond the reach of man--of things such as these
Gwynplaine had no idea. Nor had he even in his mind materials out of
which to build up a conjecture, information concerning such things being
very scanty in the social depths in which he lived. Still he detected a
shadow; he felt that a mist hung over all this brightness. Did he
understand it? No. Could he guess at it? Still less. What was there
behind that letter? One pair of folding doors opening before him,
another closing on him, and causing him a vague anxiety. On the one side
an avowal; on the other an enigma--avowal and enigma, which, like two
mouths, one tempting, the other threatening, pronounce the same word,
Dare!
Never had perfidious chance taken its measures better, nor timed more
fitly the moment of temptation. Gwynplaine, stirred by spring, and by
the sap rising in all things, was prompt to dream the dream of the
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