“Do you fancy, perhaps, that she is still bound by that unfortunate engagement?”
“I trust she is not.”
“I’m quite sure she is not. She is free, I tell you, as free as you. Well, why don’t you love her?”
“But I do love her, Monsieur Flamaran!”
“Why, then, I congratulate you, my boy!”
He leaned across the table and gave me a hearty grasp of the hand. He was so agitated that he could not speak—choking with joyful emotion, as if he had been Jeanne’s father, or mine.
After a minute or so, he drew himself up in his chair, reached out, put a hand on each of my shoulders and kept it there as if he feared I might fly away.
“So you love her, you love her! Good gracious, what a business I’ve had to get you to say so! You are quite right to love her, of course, of course—I could not have understood your doing otherwise; but I must say this, my boy, that if you tarry too long, with her attractions, you know what will happen.”
“Yes, I ought to ask for her at once.”
“To be sure you ought.”