Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/64

68 Scarcely had I uttered these last words when she sprang from her seat in a transport of joy, and ran to embrace me. She overwhelmed me with passionate caresses, and called me by all the fond names which love invents for the expression of its tenderest emotions.

I responded but languidly at first. The transition from my recent condition of mental tranquillity to the tumultuous emotions which I now felt reviving in my breast was so great and so sudden that it positively appalled me. I shuddered like a man who finds himself benighted in the midst of some solitary plain; everything around him seems to belong to a strange and unfamiliar order of things; he is seized with a nameless horror, and regains his composure only after a prolonged examination of all his surroundings.

We seated ourselves side by side, and I took her hands in mine.

"Ah, Manon!" said I, gazing at her sadly; "little did I foresee the base treachery with which you have repaid my love! It was an easy thing for you to deceive a heart over which you reigned in absolute sovereignty, and which found all its happiness in obeying you and gratifying your every wish. Tell me, have you found any other so tender