"Suffered!" he cried; "I have been tossed high in the azure that I might
sink the farther into the depths. I have been put in a grave, the earth
stamped down, resurrected, and flung into the dust-heap. I have been
taken up to the gate of heaven and dropped a hundred and fifty years
through darkness. Since I have seen you I have been the round of all the
bright places and all the bottomless pits in the firmament."

"It seems to have made you literary," I remarked judicially.

"I burn up twenty times a day," he continued, with a wave of the hand to
express the completeness of the process; "there is nothing left. I see
her, I speak to her, and I burn up."

"Have you had many tete-a-tetes?" I asked.

"Not one," he retorted fiercely; "do you think there is any sense in the
damnable French custom? I am an honorable man, and, besides, I am not
equipped for an elopement. No priest in Louisiana would marry us. I see
her at dinner, at supper. Sometimes we sew on the gallery," he went on,
"but I give you my oath that I have not had one word with her alone."

"An oath is not necessary," I said. "But you seem to have made some
progress nevertheless."

"Do you call that progress?" he demanded.

"It is surely not retrogression."

"God knows what it is," said Nick, helplessly, "but it's got to stop. I
have sent her an ultimatum."

"A what?"

"A summons. Her father and mother are going to the Bertrands' to-night,
and I have written her a note to meet me in the garden. And you," he
cried, rising and slapping me between the shoulders, "you are to keep
watch, like the dear, careful, canny, sly rascal you are."

"And--and has she accepted?" I inquired.

"That's the deuce of it," said he; "she has not. But I think she'll
come."

I stood for a moment regarding him.

"And you really love Mademoiselle Antoinette?" I asked.

"Have I not exhausted the language?" he answered. "If what I have been
through is not love, then may the Lord shield me from the real disease."

"It may have been merely a light case of--tropical enthusiasm, let us
say. I have seen others, a little milder because the air was more
temperate."

"Tropical--balderdash," he exploded. "If you are not the most
exasperating, unfeeling man alive--"

"I merely wanted to know if you wished to marry Mademoiselle de St. Gre,"
I interrupted.

He gave me a look of infinite tolerance.

"Have I not made it plain that I cannot live without her?" he said; "if
not, I