For two days Angelique was conscience-smitten.

As soon as she was alone, she sobbed as if she had done something wrong.

And this question, which she could not answer, came constantly to her mind: Had she sinned in listening to this young man?
Was she lost, like the dreadful women in the Legend, who, having been tempted, had yielded to the Devil?
Was life to-day as it was centuries ago?
The words, so softly uttered, "I love you," still resounded with such a tumult in her ears, and she was confused, yet pleased by them to such a degree, that they must certainly have come from some terrible power hidden in the depth of the invisible.
But she knew not--in fact, how could she have known anything in the ignorance and solitude in which she had grown up?
Her anguish was redoubled by this mysterious and inexplicable struggle within her.
Had she sinned in making the acquaintance of Felicien, and then in keeping it a secret?
She recalled to her mind, one by one, all the details of her daily experience during the past few weeks; she argued with her innocent scruples.
What was sin, in short?
Was it simply to meet--to talk--and afterwards to tell a falsehood to one's parents?
But that could not be the extent of the evil.

Then why was she so oppressed?
Why, if not guilty, did she suddenly seem to have become quite another person--as agitated as if a new soul had been given her?
Perhaps it was sin that had made her so weak and uncomfortable.

Her heart was full of vague, undefined longings--so strange a medley of words, and also of acts, in the future, that she was frightened by them, without in the least understanding them.