imits of discretion.

"And in what season may this rhyming fancy touch us?" she asked.
"Enlighten me, Monsieur."

He smiled, responsive to her merry mood, and his courage ever swelling
under the suasion of it, he answered her in a fearless, daring fashion
that was oddly unlike his wont. But then, he was that day a man
transformed.

"It comes, Mademoiselle, upon some spring morning such as this--for is
not spring the mating season, and have not poets sung of it, inspired
and conquered by it? It comes in the April of life, when in our hearts
we bear the first fragrant bud of what shall anon blossom into a
glorious summer bloom red as is Love's livery and perfumed beyond all
else that God has set on earth for man's delight and thankfulness."

The intensity with which he spoke, and the essence of the speech
itself, left her a moment dumb with wonder and with an incomprehensible
consternation, born of some intuition not yet understood.

"And so, Monsieur, the Secretary," said she at last, a nervous laugh
quivering in her first words, "from all this wondrous verbiage I am to
take it that you love?"

"Aye, that I love, dear lady," he cried, his eyes so intent upon her
that her glance grew timid and fell before them. And then, a second
later, she could have screamed aloud in apprehension, for the book of
Jean Jacques Rousseau lay tumbled in the grass where he had flung it,
even as he flung himself upon his knees before her. "You may take it
indeed that I love--that I love you, Mademoiselle."

The audacious words being spoken, his courage oozed away and
anti-climax, followed. He paled and trembled, yet he knelt on until
she should bid him rise, and furtively he watched her face. He saw it
darken; he saw the brows knit; he noted the quickening breath, and in
all these signs he read his doom before she uttered it.

"Monsieur, monsieur," she answered him, and sad was her tone, "to what
lengths do you urge this springtime folly? Have you forgotten so your
station--yes, and mine--that because I talk with you and laugh with you,
and am kind to you, you must presume to speak to me in this fashion?
What answer shall I make you, Monsieur--for I am not so cruel that I can
answer you as you deserve."

An odd thing indeed was La Boulaye's courage. An instant ago he had felt
a very coward, and had quivered, appalled by the audacity of his own
words. Now that she assailed him thus, and taxed him with that same
audacity, the blood o