rs together, step for step, with arms
closely linked, trembling both of them beneath their load of joy. Each
pressing close to the other's side, like a pair of doves, they reached
the Place de la Sorbonne, where Pauline's carriage was waiting.

"I want to go home with you," she said. "I want to see your own room and
your study, and to sit at the table where you work. It will be like old
times," she said, blushing.

She spoke to the servant. "Joseph, before returning home I am going to
the Rue de Varenne. It is a quarter-past three now, and I must be back
by four o'clock. George must hurry the horses." And so in a few moments
the lovers came to Valentin's abode.

"How glad I am to have seen all this for myself!" Pauline cried,
creasing the silken bed-curtains in Raphael's room between her fingers.
"As I go to sleep, I shall be here in thought. I shall imagine your dear
head on the pillow there. Raphael, tell me, did no one advise you about
the furniture of your hotel?"

"No one whatever."

"Really? It was not a woman who----"

"Pauline!"

"Oh, I know I am fearfully jealous. You have good taste. I will have a
bed like yours to-morrow."

Quite beside himself with happiness, Raphael caught Pauline in his arms.

"Oh, my father!" she said; "my father----"

"I will take you back to him," cried Valentin, "for I want to be away
from you as little as possible."

"How loving you are! I did not venture to suggest it----"

"Are you not my life?"

It would be tedious to set down accurately the charming prattle of the
lovers, for tones and looks and gestures that cannot be rendered alone
gave it significance. Valentin went back with Pauline to her own door,
and returned with as much happiness in his heart as mortal man can know.

When he was seated in his armchair beside the fire, thinking over the
sudden and complete way in which his wishes had been fulfilled, a cold
shiver went through him, as if the blade of a dagger had been plunged
into his breast--he thought of the Magic Skin, and saw that it had
shrunk a little. He uttered the most tremendous of French oaths, without
any of the Jesuitical reservations made by the Abbess of Andouillettes,
leant his head against the back of the chair, and sat motionless, fixing
his unseeing eyes upon the bracket of the curtain pole.

"Good God!" he cried; "every wish! Every desire of mine! Poor
Pauline!----"

He took a pair of compasses and measured the extent of existence tha