n a like occasion.

At last, as my only answer to all her entreaties was, "Do you love me,
or are you fooling me?" she saw what a brute she had to deal with, and,
making up her mind accordingly, she came towards me, threw her arms
round my neck, hid her face in my bosom, and let me kiss her hair. Then
she put me gently from her, saying:

"Ah, mon Dieu! don't you see how I love you--how I could not help loving
you from the very first moment I saw you? But don't you understand that
I hate your uncles, and that I would be yours alone?"

"Yes," I replied, obstinately, "because you say to yourself: 'This is a
booby whom I shall persuade to do anything I wish, by telling him that
I love him; he will believe it, and I will take him away to be hanged.'
Come; there is only one word which will serve if you love me."

She looked at me with an agonized air. I sought to press my lips to hers
whenever her head was not turned away. I held her hands in mine. She was
powerless now to do more than delay the hour of her defeat. Suddenly
the colour rushed back to the pale face; she began to smile; and with an
expression of angelic coquetry, she asked:

"And you--do you love me?"

From this moment the victory was hers. I no longer had power to will
what I wished. The lynx in me was subdued; the man rose in its place;
and I believe that my voice had a human ring, as I cried for the first
time in my life:

"Yes, I love you! Yes, I love you!"

"Well, then," she said, distractedly, and in a caressing tone, "let us
love each other and escape together."

"Yes, let us escape," I answered. "I loathe this house, and I loathe my
uncles. I have long wanted to escape. And yet I shall only be hanged,
you know."

"They won't hang you," she rejoined with a laugh; "my betrothed is a
lieutenant-general."

"Your betrothed!" I cried, in a fresh fit of jealousy more violent than
the first. "You are going to be married?"

"And why not?" she replied, watching me attentively.

I turned pale and clinched my teeth.

"In that case, . . ." I said, trying to carry her off in my arms.

"In that case," she answered, giving me a little tap on the cheek, "I
see that you are jealous; but his must be a particular jealousy who at
ten o'clock yearns for his mistress, only to hand her over at midnight
to eight drunken men who will return her to him on the morrow as foul as
the mud on the roads."

"Ah, you are right!" I exclaimed. "Go, then; go. I would defe