La Boulaye's breath seemed in that instant to forsake him and he grew paler than Nature and the writer's desk had fashioned him. Awkwardly he turned and made her a deep bow.
“Mademoiselle! You—you see that you surprised me!” he faltered, like a fool. For how should he, whose only comrades had been books, have learnt to bear himself in the company of a woman, particularly when she belonged to the ranks of those whom—despite Rousseau and his other dear philosophers—he had been for years in the habit of accounting his betters?
“Why, then, I am glad, Monsieur, that I surprised you in so gay a humour—for, my faith, it is a rare enough thing.”
“True, lady,” said he foolishly, yet politely agreeing with her, “it is a rare thing.” And he sighed—“Helas!”
At that the laughter leapt from her young lips, and turned him hot and cold as he stood awkwardly before her.
“I see that we shall have you sad at the thought of how rare is happiness, you that but a moment back were—or so it seemed—so joyous. Or is it that my coming has overcast the sky of your good humour?” she demanded archly.
He blushed like a school-girl, and strenuously protested that it was not so. In his haste he fell headlong into the sin of hastiness—as was but natural—and said perhaps too much.
“Your coming, Mademoiselle?” he echoed. “Nay but even had I been sad, your coming must have dispelled my melancholy as the coming of the sun dispels the mist upon the mountains.”
“A poet?” She mocked him playfully, with a toss of black curls and a distracting glance of eyes blue as the heavens above them. “A poet, Monsieur, and I never suspected it, for all that I held you a great scholar. My father says you are.”
“Are we not all poets at some season of our lives?” quoth he, for growing accustomed to her presence—ravished by it, indeed—his courage was returning fast and urging him beyond the limits of discretion.