her that
her fears were without foundation, and the girl, having on her side a
willingness to be convinced, they ended by coming to an understanding.
Only they were no longer at an understanding when midnight struck, for
Rodolphe wanted Juliet to stay, and she insisted on going.

"No," she said to him as he persisted in trying to persuade her. "Why be
in such a hurry? We shall always arrive in time at what we want to,
provided you do not halt on the way. I will return tomorrow."

And she returned thus every evening for a week, to go away in the same
way when midnight struck.

This delay did not annoy Rodolphe very much. In matters of love, and
even of mere fancy, he was one of that school of travelers who prolong
their journey and render it picturesque. The little sentimental preface
had for its result to lead on Rodolphe at the outset further than he
meant to go. And it was no doubt to lead him to that point at which
fancy, ripened by the resistance opposed to it, begins to resemble love,
that Mademoiselle Juliet had made use of this stratagem.

At each fresh visit that she paid to Rodolphe, Juliet remarked a more
pronounced tone of sincerity in what he said. He felt when she was a
little behindhand in keeping her appointment an impatience that
delighted her, and he even wrote her letters the language of which was
enough to give her hopes that she would speedily become his legitimate
mistress.

When Marcel, who was his confidant, once caught sight of one of
Rodolphe's epistles, he said to him:

"Is it an exercise of style, or do you really think what you have said
here?"

"Yes, I really think it," replied Rodolphe, "and I am even a bit
astonished at it: but it is so. I was a week back in a very sad state of
mind. The solitude and silence that had so abruptly succeeded the storms
and tempests of my old household alarmed me terribly, but Juliet arrived
almost at the moment. I heard the sounds of twenty year old laughter
ring in my ears. I had before me a rosy face, eyes beaming with smiles,
a mouth overflowing with kisses, and I have quietly allowed myself to
glide down the hill of fancy that might perhaps lead me on to love. I
love to love."

However, Rodolphe was not long in perceiving that it only depended upon
himself to bring this little romance to a crisis, and it was than that
he had the notion of copying from Shakespeare the scene of the love of
_Romeo and Juliet_. His future mistress had deemed the not