"These women are making sport of me," said Henri to himself.

At that moment Paquita raised her head, cast at him one of those looks
which reach the very soul and consume it. So beautiful seemed she that
he swore he would possess such a treasure of beauty.

"My Paquita! Be mine!"

"Wouldst thou kill me?" she said fearfully, palpitating and anxious, but
drawn towards him by an inexplicable force.

"Kill thee--I!" he said, smiling.

Paquita uttered a cry of alarm, said a word to the old woman, who
authoritatively seized Henri's hand and that of her daughter. She gazed
at them for a long time, and then released them, wagging her head in a
fashion horribly significant.

"Be mine--this evening, this moment; follow me, do not leave me! It must
be, Paquita! Dost thou love me? Come!"

In a moment he had poured out a thousand foolish words to her, with the
rapidity of a torrent coursing between the rocks, and repeating the same
sound in a thousand different forms.

"It is the same voice!" said Paquita, in a melancholy voice, which
De Marsay could not overhear, "and the same ardor," she added. "So be
it--yes," she said, with an abandonment of passion which no words can
describe. "Yes; but not to-night. To-night Adolphe, I gave too little
opium to La Concha. She might wake up, and I should be lost. At this
moment the whole household believes me to be asleep in my room. In two
days be at the same spot, say the same word to the same man. That man is
my foster-father. Cristemio worships me, and would die in torments for
me before they could extract one word against me from him. Farewell,"
she said seizing Henri by the waist and twining round him like a
serpent.

She pressed him on every side at once, lifted her head to his, and
offered him her lips, then snatched a kiss which filled them both with
such a dizziness that it seemed to Henri as though the earth opened; and
Paquita cried: "Enough, depart!" in a voice which told how little
she was mistress of herself. But she clung to him still, still crying
"Depart!" and brought him slowly to the staircase. There the mulatto,
whose white eyes lit up at the sight of Paquita, took the torch from the
hands of his idol, and conducted Henri to the street. He left the light
under the arch, opened the door, put Henri into the carriage, and set
him down on the Boulevard des Italiens with marvelous rapidity. It was
as though the horses had hell-fire in their veins.

The scene was like