Part 68 (2/2)

In common equity, it is yours. In common civility, as student to student, I offer it to you. Say, is it yes or no?”

”Since you put it so simply and so generously, and since I believe you really wish me to accept your offer,” replies Mademoiselle Dufresnoy, taking out her purse, ”I suppose I must say--yes.”

And with this, she puts out her hand for the hook, and offers me in return the sum of five and twenty francs.

Pained at having to accept the money, pained at being offered it, seeing no way of refusing it, and feel altogether more distress than is reasonable in a man brought up to the taking of fees; I affect not to see the coin, and, bowing, move away in the direction of my own door.

”Pardon, Monsieur,” she says, ”but you forget that I am in your debt.”

”And--and do you really insist...”

She looks at me, half surprised and half offended.

”If you do not take the money, Monsieur, how can I take the book?”

Bowing, I receive the unwelcome francs in my unwilling palm.

Still she lingers.

”I--I have not thanked you as I ought for your generosity,” she says, hesitatingly.

”Generosity!” I repeat, glancing with some bitterness at the five and twenty francs.

”True kindness, Monsieur, is neither bought nor sold,” says the lady, with the loveliest smile in the world, and closes her door.

CHAPTER XLII

THE OLD, OLD STORY.

What thing is Love, which nought can countervail?

Nought save itself--even such a thing is Love.

SIR W. RALEIGH.

My acquaintance with Hortense Dufresnoy progressed slowly as, ever, and not even the Froissart incident went far towards promoting it. Absorbed in her studies, living for the intellect only, too self-contained to know the need for sympathy, she continued to be, at all events for me, the most inaccessible of G.o.d's creatures. And yet, despite her indifference, I loved her. Her pale, proud face haunted me; her voice haunted me. I thought of her sometimes till it seemed impossible she should not in some way be conscious of how my very soul was centred in her. But she knew nothing--guessed nothing--cared nothing; and the knowledge that I held no place in her life wrought in me at times till it became almost too bitter for endurance.

And this was love--real, pa.s.sionate, earnest; the first and last love of my heart. Did I believe that I ever loved till now? Ah! no; for now only I felt the G.o.d in his strength, and beheld him in his beauty. Was I not blind till I had looked into her eyes and drunk of their light? Was I not deaf till I had heard the music of her voice? Had I ever truly lived, or breathed, or known delight till now?

I never stayed to ask myself how this would end, or whither it would lead me. The mere act of loving was too sweet for questioning. What cared I for the uncertainties of the future, having hope to live upon in the present? Was it not enough ”to feed for aye my lamp and flames of love,” and wors.h.i.+p her till that wors.h.i.+p became a religion and a rite?

And now, longing to achieve something which should extort at least her admiration, if not her love, I wished I were a soldier, that I might win glory for her--or a poet, that I might write verses in her praise which should be deathless--or a painter, that I might spend years of my life in copying the dear perfection of her face. Ah! and I would so copy it that all the world should be in love with it. Not a wave of her brown hair that I would not patiently follow through all its windings. Not the tender tracery of a blue vein upon her temples that I would not lovingly render through its transparent veil of skin. Not a depth of her dark eyes that I would not study, ”deep drinking of the infinite.” Alas!

those eyes, so grave, so luminous, so steadfast:--

”Eyes not down-dropt, not over-bright, but fed With the clear-pointed flame of chast.i.ty,”

--eyes wherein dwelt ”thought folded over thought,” what painter need ever hope to copy them?

<script>