18
Certainly, cried I.
The amiable stranger smiled; I sat myself clown by her, and pressed her to speak to me confidently, and tell me why she determined to remain in that garden.
All my companions, replied she, have either husbands or lovers, whom they ardently desire to see once more. I admire their constancy, but have no wish to imitate it. Since, however, my lord, you desire a recital of my adventures, I shall willingly oblige you.
I have a lively imagination, great sensibility, and excessive delicacy: it is easy to touch my heart, but difficult to fix it. At the beginning of an attachment, I see the best side of every thing, and make a god of my lover; but, when chance and circumstances ravish the illusion from me, I find I have loved only a chimera; and detach myself, or rather awaken from an agreeable dream, which vanishes before truth. The world has the injustice to call this effort of reason inconstancy. I change not through caprice or lassitude, but am deceived and undeceived.
