so
searching that she read my thought; her eyes fell, and I scrutinized
her face. It was so pure and frank that I fancied I could see as clearly
into her heart as into my own.

"'Do you love me?' I asked.

"'A little,--passionately--not a bit!' she cried.

"Then she did not love me. Her jesting tones, and a little gleeful
movement that escaped her, expressed nothing beyond a girlish, blithe
goodwill. I told her about my distress and the predicament in which I
found myself, and asked her to help me.

"'You do not wish to go to the pawnbroker's yourself, M. Raphael,' she
answered, 'and yet you would send me!'

"I blushed in confusion at the child's reasoning. She took my hand in
hers as if she wanted to compensate for this home-truth by her light
touch upon it.

"'Oh, I would willingly go,' she said, 'but it is not necessary. I found
two five-franc pieces at the back of the piano, that had slipped without
your knowledge between the frame and the keyboard, and I laid them on
your table.'

"'You will soon be coming into some money, M. Raphael,' said the kind
mother, showing her face between the curtains, 'and I can easily lend
you a few crowns meanwhile.'

"'Oh, Pauline!' I cried, as I pressed her hand, 'how I wish that I were
rich!'

"'Bah! why should you?' she said petulantly. Her hand shook in mine with
the throbbing of her pulse; she snatched it away, and looked at both of
mine.

"'You will marry a rich wife,' she said, 'but she will give you a great
deal of trouble. Ah, _Dieu_! she will be your death,--I am sure of it.'

"In her exclamation there was something like belief in her mother's
absurd superstitions.

"'You are very credulous, Pauline!'

"'The woman whom you will love is going to kill you--there is no doubt
of it,' she said, looking at me with alarm.

"She took up her brush again and dipped it in the color; her great
agitation was evident; she looked at me no longer. I was ready to give
credence just then to superstitious fancies; no man is utterly wretched
so long as he is superstitious; a belief of that kind is often in
reality a hope.

"I found that those two magnificent five-franc pieces were lying, in
fact, upon my table when I reached my room. During the first confused
thoughts of early slumber, I tried to audit my accounts so as to explain
this unhoped-for windfall; but I lost myself in useless calculations,
and slept. Just as I was leaving my room to engage a box the next
morning