e
said, "think what I suffer! If you suffer from a piece of delicacy,
think what I suffer in my shame! To have my trash refused! You would
rather steal, you think of me so basely! You would rather tread my heart
in pieces! O unkind! O my Prince! O Otto! O pity me!" She was still
clasping him; then she found his hand and covered it with kisses, and at
this his head began to turn. "O," she cried again, "I see it! O what a
horror! It is because I am old, because I am no longer beautiful." And
she burst into a storm of sobs.

This was the _coup de grace_. Otto had now to comfort and compose her as
he could, and before many words, the money was accepted. Between the
woman and the weak man such was the inevitable end. Madame von Rosen
instantly composed her sobs. She thanked him with a fluttering voice,
and resumed her place upon the bench at the far end from Otto. "Now you
see," she said, "why I bade you keep the thief at distance, and why I
came alone. How I trembled for my treasure!"

"Madam," said Otto, with a tearful whimper in his voice, "spare me! You
are too good, too noble!"

"I wonder to hear you," she returned. "You have avoided a great folly.
You will be able to meet your good old peasant. You have found an
excellent investment for a friend's money. You have preferred essential
kindness to an empty scruple; and now you are ashamed of it! You have
made your friend happy; and now you mourn as the dove! Come, cheer up. I
know it is depressing to have done exactly right; but you need not make
a practice of it. Forgive yourself this virtue; come now, look me in the
face and smile!"

He did look at her. When a man has been embraced by a woman, he sees her
in a glamour; and at such a time, in the baffling glimmer of the stars,
she will look wildly well. The hair is touched with light; the eyes are
constellations; the face sketched in shadows--a sketch, you might say,
by passion. Otto became consoled for his defeat; he began to take an
interest. "No," he said, "I am no ingrate."

"You promised me fun," she returned, with a laugh. "I have given you as
good. We have had a stormy _scena_."

He laughed in his turn, and the sound of the laughter, in either case,
was hardly reassuring.

"Come, what are you going to give me in exchange," she continued, "for
my excellent declamation?"

"What you will," he said.

"Whatever I will? Upon your honour? Suppose I ask the crown?" She was
flashing upon him, beautiful in trium