First Part Chapter 27

"So far, I have found nothing very terrible in marriage," I said, as I
walked to the window and looked out on the glorious moon which lit up
a charming park, breathing of heavy scents. He drew near, put his arm again round me, and said: "Why fear it? Have I ever yet proved false to my promise in gesture or
look? Why should I be false in the future?"

Yet never were words or glances more full of mastery; his voice
thrilled every fibre of my heart and roused a sleeping force; his eyes
were like the sun in power.

"Oh!" I exclaimed, "what a world of Moorish perfidy in this attitude
of perpetual prostration!"

He understood, my dear.

So, my fair sweetheart, if I have let months slip by without writing,
you can now divine the cause. I have to recall the girl's strange past
in order to explain the woman to myself. Renee, I understand you now.
Not to her dearest friend, not to her mother, not, perhaps, even to
herself, can a happy bride speak of her happiness. This memory ought
to remain absolutely her own, an added rapture--a thing beyond words,
too sacred for disclosure!

Is it possible that the name of duty has been given to the delicious
frenzy of the heart, to the overwhelming rush of passion? And for what
purpose?

What malevolent power conceived the idea of crushing a
woman's sensitive delicacy and all the thousand wiles of her modesty
under the fetters of constraint? What sense of duty can force from her
these flowers of the heart, the roses of life, the passionate poetry
of her nature, apart from love? To claim feeling as a right! Why, it
blooms of itself under the sun of love, and shrivels to death under
the cold blast of distaste and aversion! Let love guard his own
rights!