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 God'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.