much divinity, or ask me to oblige you with consistency. Mephistopheles always takes a woman's guise now; he has found he can change his masks so much more quickly! Will you dine with me? Dress? Oh! I will pardon your costume—it is velvet, picturesque, rather Spanish."
She motioned him to take his way into the deserted library, and went from him down the corridors of the Villa Santilla, that they had reached whilst she spoke.
Had she any love for him? He had no belief that she could have. And yet—if there were none in her heart, was it not rankest cruelty to toy with him thus? No—he could not reproach her that it was; she had bidden him over and over again leave her, she had refused to hear words of love from him, she had only acceded to his remaining near her at his own persisting prayer; there was no blame here. He had no thought that she could care in any way for his fate; the caprice of her manner, the mockery of her satire, the profound pathos that had tinged her words, the strenuous force with which she had bidden him think evil of her—these were not the ways of women to one they loved; they were the inconstancies of a heart ill at ease, of a spirit without rest and not without regret, but they were not
