A few days afterwards she amused me still more. After writing about half-an-hour, she threw down her pen—
“I never can do it; come upstairs, my dear Valerie, and help me off with my stays. I must be á l’abandon.”
I followed her, and having removed these impediments we returned to the boudoir.
“There,” said she, sitting down, “I think I shall manage it now: I feel as if I could.”
“Manage what?” inquired I.
“My dear, I am about to write a love scene, very warm and impassioned, and I could not do it, confined as I was. Now that I am loose, I can give loose to the reins of my imagination, and delineate with the arrow of Cupid’s self. My heroine is reclining, with her hand on her cheek; put yourself in that attitude, my dear dear Valerie, as if you were meditating upon the prolonged absence of one dear to you. Exactly—beautiful—true to nature—but I forgot, a page enters—don’t move, I’ll ring the bell.”
Lionel answered quickly, as usual.
“Here, Lionel, I want you to play the page.”
“I’ve no time for play, my lady; I’m page in earnest. There’s all the knives to clean.”
“Never mind the knives just now. Observe, Lionel, you are supposed to be sent a message to that lovely girl, who is sitting absorbed in a soft reverie. You enter her presence unperceived, and are struck with her beauty; you lean against a tree, in a careless but graceful attitude, with your eyes fixed upon her lovely features. Now lean against the door, as I have described, and then I shall be able to write.”