I have heard that love gives eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, a tongue to the dumb. I know that at that moment, as my heart burned within me and the words rushed unbidden to my lips, the world appeared a small and trivial thing, with nothing worthy in it save me and this woman and the love I had for her. I have no words to describe the emotion which shook me, the passion which flowed in my veins and took possession of my being. It was as if a sudden miracle had been wrought in me, a sublimation of everything unworthy; it was as though I had climbed a mountain peak and come out under the clear stars, in the thin pure air, with nothing between myself and God. I have never again reached a height quite so sublime, or experienced a bliss quite so poignant.
I was too blinded for the moment by my own emotion to see my companion clearly; only her starry eyes I saw, and her parted lips, and her clasped hands. Then she drew away from me and seemed to shake herself as though awaking from a dream; and a cold breath blew upon me, and I, too, awoke. The spell was broken, the vision ended, the glorious moment gone.
“Indeed,” she said, her voice not wholly steady, but her eyes instinct with mischief, “it seems to me that you are fairly eloquent, M. de Tavernay, despite your lack of practise. I tremble to think what you will be in a year’s time.”
“I shall be just what I am now,” I said doggedly, wounded at her tone. “You have sounded the height and depth of my eloquence.”
“And am I to believe all this?”
“If you do not, mademoiselle, it is not because it is not true.”
“But your betrothed,” she persisted, “has she no attractions?”
“I have not seen her since she was a child of eight,” I answered coldly. “I remember only that she had white hair and a red nose.”
She burst into a peal of laughter which shook her from head to foot, and which I thought exceedingly ill-timed.
“Many children have,” she said, when she could speak articulately. “I should not allow such little things as those to prejudice me against her. No doubt her hair is darker now, and that redness of the nose may have been only temporary. Perhaps her memory of you is no more complimentary.”