"I am so happy at your feet," he said, gently preventing her. "Everybody else can sit beside you; I only have the right to kneel. Do not take this right away from me."
Madame de Bergenheim extricated one of her hands, and, raising her finger with a threatening gesture, she said:
"Think a little less of your rights, and more of your duties. I advise you to obey me and to profit by my kindness, which allows you to sit by my side for a moment. Think that I might be more severe, and that if I treated you as you merited—if I told you to go away, would you obey me?"
Gerfaut hesitated a moment and looked at her supplicatingly.
"I would obey," said he; "but would you have the courage to order it?"
"I allow you to remain until just half past twelve," said she, as she glanced at the clock, which she could see through the half-open door. Gerfaut followed her glance, and saw that she accorded him only a quarter of an hour: but he was too clever to make any observation. He knew that the second quarter of an hour is always less difficult to obtain than the first.
"I am sure," said she, "that you have thought me capricious to-day; you must pardon me, it is a family fault. You know the saying: 'Caprice de Corandeuil?"
"I wish it to be said: Amour de Gerfaut," said he, tenderly.
"You are right to be amiable and say pleasant things to me, for I need them badly to-night. I am sad and weary; the darkest visions come before my mind. I think it is the storm which makes me feel so. How doleful this thunder is! It seems to me like an omen of misfortune."
"It is only the fancy of your vivid imagination. If you exerted the same will to be happy that you do to imagine troubles, our life would be perfect. What matters the storm? and even if you do see an omen in it, what is there so very terrible? Clouds are vapor, thunder is a sound, both are equally ephemeral; only the blue sky, which they can obscure but for a moment, is eternal."