all M. Paul’s face a quick rising light and fire. I can hardly tell how he managed the movement. It did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy. He gave his hand; it scarce touched her, I thought; she ran, she whirled from the room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.

The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more myself—reassured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless, not sick of life and seeking death.

“It made you very sad, then, to lose your friend?” said he.

“It kills me to be forgotten, monsieur,” I said. “All these weary days I have not heard from you one word, and I was crushed with the possibility, growing to certainty, that you would depart without saying farewell.”

“Must I tell you what I told Modeste Beck—that you do not know me? Must I show and teach you my character? You will have proof that I can be a firm friend? Without clear proof this hand will not lie still in mine, it will not trust my shoulder as a safe stay? Good. The proof is ready. I come to justify myself.”

“Say anything, teach anything, prove anything, monsieur; I can listen now.”

“Then, in the first place, you must go out with me a good distance into the town. I came on purpose to fetch you.”

Without questioning his meaning, or sounding his plan, or offering the semblance of an objection, I retied my bonnet. I was ready.

The route he took was by the boulevards. He several times made me sit down on the seats stationed under the lime-trees; he did not ask if I was tired, but looked, and drew his own conclusions.

“All these weary days,” said he, repeating my words, with a gentle, kindly mimicry of my voice and foreign accent, not new from his lips, and of which the playful banter never wounded, not even when coupled, as it often was, with the assertion that, however I might write his language, I spoke and always should speak it imperfectly and hesitatingly—“ ‘all these weary days’ I have not for one hour forgotten you. Faithful women err in this, that they think themselves the sole faithful of God’s creatures. On a very fervent and living truth to myself I, too, till lately, scarce dared count from any quarter; but—look at me.”

I lifted my happy eyes. They were happy now, or they would have been no interpreters of my heart.

“Well,” said he, after some seconds’ scrutiny, “there is no denying that signature. Constancy wrote it; her pen is of iron. Was the record painful?”

“Severely painful,” I said, with truth. “Withdraw her hand, monsieur; I can bear its inscribing force no more.”

“Elle est toute pâle,” said he, speaking to himself; “cette figure là me fait mal.”

“Ah! I am not pleasant to look at.”

I could not help saying this; the words came unbidden. I never remember the time when I had not a haunting dread of what might be the degree of my outward deficiency; this dread pressed me at the moment with special force.

A great softness passed upon his countenance; his violet eyes grew suffused and glistening under their deep Spanish lashes. He started up. “Let us walk on.”

“Do I displease your eyes much?” I took courage to urge. The point had its vital import for me.