“Really? It was not a woman who——”
“Pauline!”
“Oh, I know I am fearfully jealous. You have good taste. I will have a bed like yours to-morrow.”
Quite beside himself with happiness, Raphael caught Pauline in his arms.
“Oh, my father!” she said; “my father——”
“I will take you back to him,” cried Valentin, “for I want to be away from you as little as possible.”
“How loving you are! I did not venture to suggest it——”
“Are you not my life?”
It would be tedious to set down accurately the charming prattle of the lovers, for tones and looks and gestures that cannot be rendered alone gave it significance. Valentin went back with Pauline to her own door, and returned with as much happiness in his heart as mortal man can know.
When he was seated in his armchair beside the fire, thinking over the sudden and complete way in which his wishes had been fulfilled, a cold shiver went through him, as if the blade of a dagger had been plunged into his breast—he thought of the Magic Skin, and saw that it had shrunk a little. He uttered the most tremendous of French oaths, without any of the Jesuitical reservations made by the Abbess of Andouillettes, leant his head against the back of the chair, and sat motionless, fixing his unseeing eyes upon the bracket of the curtain pole.