specially as I have a way of not being very slow in my
feelings of love and hate. You have had experience of that yourself."

He paused for a moment, and gave her a hasty glance. But she did not
stir, so breathlessly was she listening to him, her eyes fixed on the
head of the dog, who lay quietly sleeping at her side.

"I will spare you any account of the further course of my love affair,"
he continued. "It is enough that in eight days I gained my case by
ardor and flattery: and Lucie was my betrothed.

"The strange manner in which she bore herself in this position ought to
have warned me. To my first passionate wooing she had opposed a
prudishness and a maidenly reserve such as I had not expected to find
in an actress, especially as she let me see plainly enough that she
felt anything but indifferent toward me, and that the homage of an
artist whose reputation was then in the ascendant was exceptionally
flattering to her. But no sooner did I, somewhat taken aback by this
severe maidenly reserve, make her a proposal that aimed at nothing less
than our marriage and her retirement from the stage, than her tone
changed. She began to treat the subject with greater lightness, to
utter platitudes against marriages among artists, and in praise of the
happiness of liberty; to tease me with moods, and to attract me again
by all kinds of pretty coaxing; so that my passionate obstinacy was
urged higher and higher, until at last I forced her, half against her
will, to fix the wedding-day.

"Of course this excited the greatest amazement among my former
companions, who could scarcely believe their ears. To those with whom I
was most intimate I expatiated on the matter as an exceedingly
practical undertaking, as a truly sensible marriage. I should never
again find a being who was thus equally removed from Philistinism and
evil courses. Besides, one cannot go on sowing wild oats forever; and
it seemed to me that now, when my prospects had begun to seem quite
favorable on account of a number of orders I had received, was the most
suitable time to settle to a steadier life. This is what I said to my
most intimate friends. I said nothing to the others. One of them, our
Falstaff, who was the one most concerned at my loss, took me aside one
day and asked whether I was really in earnest about this foolish
affair. Upon my replying that I was sufficiently in earnest to forbid
any contemptuous criticism upon my conduct, even from a good frie