mmer.

I advanced to the centre of the chamber, and there I paused and waited
until it should please her to acknowledge my presence and turn to face
me. I was no fledgling. I had seen much, I had learnt much and been in
many places, and my bearing was wont to convey it. Never in my life
had I been gauche, for which I thank my parents, and if years ago--long
years ago--a certain timidity had marked my first introductions to the
Louvre and the Luxembourg, that timidity was something from which I had
long since parted company. And yet it seemed to me, as I stood in that
pretty, sunlit room awaiting the pleasure of that child, scarce out of
her teens, that some of the awkwardness I had escaped in earlier years,
some of the timidity of long ago, came to me then. I shifted the weight
of my body from one leg to the other; I fingered the table by which I
stood; I pulled at the hat I held; my colour came and went; I looked
at her furtively from under bent brows, and I thanked God that her back
being towards me she might not see the clown I must have seemed.

At length, unable longer to brook that discomposing silence--

"Mademoiselle!" I called softly. The sound of my own voice seemed to
invigorate me, to strip me of my awkwardness and self-consciousness. It
broke the spell that for a moment had been over me, and brought me back
to myself--to the vain, self-confident, flamboyant Bardelys that perhaps
you have pictured from my writings.

"I hope, monsieur," she answered, without turning, "that what you
may have to say may justify in some measure your very importunate
insistence."

On my life, this was not encouraging. But now that I was master of
myself, I was not again so easily to be disconcerted. My eyes rested
upon her as she stood almost framed in the opening of that long window.
How straight and supple she was, yet how dainty and slight withal! She
was far from being a tall woman, but her clean length of limb, her very
slightness, and the high-bred poise of her shapely head, conveyed an
illusion of height unless you stood beside her. The illusion did not
sway me then. I saw only a child; but a child with a great spirit, with
a great soul that seemed to accentuate her physical helplessness. That
helplessness, which I felt rather than saw, wove into the warp of my
love. She was in grief just then--in grief at the arrest of her father,
and at the dark fate that threatened him; in grief at the unworthiness
of a lover. Of t