ar situation and the amusing game you are playing with the count,
(Ah, Toinette it does not seem so absurd to me!) I should scarcely have
said what I have to-day, but simply continued to do my duty as a mere
friend, had not something occurred which unchains my tongue. A
professorship has been offered me. It's not only that I must go away
and therefore leave you behind--my whole future is secured. You know I
have no ducal aspirations. You have seen our tun and can understand
that he who has so long climbed that steep staircase without a murmur,
would not consider it a necessity of life to drive in his own carriage
through miles of woodland to an ancestral castle. Yet I should never
have expected you to climb to your heaven-upon-earth by means of such a
tottering Jacob's ladder. Now matters are different, and though my
means are still limited, my life on the whole will be quite endurable.
My brother, of course, would be the third in the alliance--" At this
moment little Jean entered and announced the arrival of the count.
Toinette did not seem to hear him, but when the boy repeated his words,
she said: "I cannot see him! Say I am not well!" The lad went out, and
they heard an eager voice in the entry talking with him, then the door
closed and soon after a carriage rolled away from the house. The room
was perfectly still. Toinette remained seated in the chair by the wall,
and Edwin on the sofa. He rose, and standing by the table seemed to be
searching for some word that might loosen her heart and tongue.

"I understand your silence, Toinette," he said at last "You're too
honest to hold forth hopes to me or to yourself in which you have no
faith. Hitherto you've liked me because I made no claims upon you. Now
I've confessed that I want all or nothing, and therefore have suddenly
become a stranger to you, an unpleasant monitor, from whom you must
defend yourself. Oh! Toinette, I feel what I've risked and perhaps
lost, but I couldn't help it; I owed this confession to you and to
myself; for the life I have hitherto led with you would if continued
consume and destroy me, and the sacrifice would not even have afforded
you pleasure, you're not vain and selfish enough for that. Why aren't
you, Toinette? Why are you this wondrous mystery, whose incompleteness
becomes a torture to itself? If you were a coquette, who found in human
sacrifices and in her triumphs compensation for all the profound joys
which can only rise from a deep h