Long I lay staring up at the heavens, wondering if I might indeed hope to win this superb creature; weaving a golden future which we trod arm in arm. To possess her, to have her always at my side, the mistress of my home, the mother of my children—the thought shook me with a delicious trembling. But at last cold reason snatched me down from this empyrean height. I told myself I was a fool, and so turned on my side, closed my eyes resolutely, and in the end sank to sleep.
I awoke with the full sun staring me in the face and sat up with a start to find my companion smiling at me across the little amphitheatre.
“Good-morning, monsieur,” she said.
“Good-morning,” I responded, and rose and went toward her.
In some magical way she had removed the stains of travel; to my eyes she seemed to have stepped but this moment from her bath. A sudden loathing of my own foul and hideous clothing came over me. How, in that guise, could she regard me with anything but disgust?
“Mademoiselle,” I said, “I am ashamed to stand here before you in this clear light, for you are sweet and fresh as the morning, while I——”
“Choose the harder part,” she interrupted, “in order to serve me better.”
“But to be hideous——”
“Oh, I do not look at the clothes,” she said; “and as for the face——”
“Well,” I prompted, “as for the face——”