“Good night! Heavens––it was not then an hour, but a day!”
“It was an hour, Monsieur! That was only one way of conveying his belief that all the day was in that hour.”
“Blessed be the teachings of the convent! And you would have me believe that an Englishman could make such speeches? However, I am eager for the finale––the next day?”
“The next day I surprised Monsieur and Madame Blanc by declaring the sketch I was doing of the woods there, was hopelessly bad––I would never complete it.”
“Ah!” and Dumaresque’s exclamation had a note of hope; “he had been a bore after all?”
“The farthest thing possible from it! When I woke in the morning it was an hour earlier than usual. I found myself with my eyes scarcely open, standing before the clock to reckon every instant of time until I should see him again. Well, from that moment my adventure ceased to be merely amusing. I told myself how many kinds of an idiot I was, and I thrust my head among the pillows again. I realized then, Monsieur, what a girl’s first romance means to her. I laughed at myself, of course, as I had laughed at others often. But I could not laugh down the certainty that the skies were bluer, the birds’ songs sweeter, and all life more lovely than it had ever been before.”
“And by what professions, or what mystic rhymes or runes, did he bring about this enchantment?”
“Not by a single sentence of protestation? An avowal would have sent me from him without a regret. If we had not met at all after that first look, that first day, I am convinced I should have been haunted by him just the same! There were long minutes when we did not speak or look at each other; but those minutes were swept with harmonies. 34 Now, Monsieur Loris, would you call that love, or is it a sort of summer-time madness?”
“Probably both, Marquise; but there was a third meeting?”